You don't gamble, you don't win

This Christmas, Santa brought me two poker books, "52 Great Poker Tips" by Lou Krieger and "Farha on Omaha" by Sam Farha. The latter book was a relatively short read, and of course I compared its contents to the other two PLO books that I have read, "How Good is Your Pot-Limit Omaha" by Stewart Reuben and Lyle Berman's PLO section in Super/System 2 (read free at Doylesroom), and the Omaha/8 section in Ray Zee's "High-Low Split Poker". In his book, Farha (or his ghost writer) instructs the reader to play Omaha in Farha's aggressive style.

Theorywise, there wasn't much that the other two books didn't already cover, except in the section about limit Omaha high, a form of game that seems to be completely dead. However, there was one individual piece of advice that I noticed made an immediate improvement in my PLO game. I am sure that this was already mentioned in the other books, but I just didn't notice it or take it to heart, and I am almost embarrassed to admit not knowing this. Namely, the fact that if your hand or draw is so good that you would call a pot-sized bet from a player who is acting after you, then you should be the one making that pot-sized bet in the first place. It's just so blindingly obvious when you think about it. I can think of only a few special situations where the end result of your betting would be worse for you, compared to you checking and then calling the pot-sized bet. If the other guy raises, you know exactly where you are standing: much behind.

The obvious continuation here is to ask if the same advice also applies to other forms of poker, not just PLO. If it does, I know I haven't seen any book actually say this, and I believe that it's the special properties of PLO that make it work there. For NL Hold'Em where there is a lot more uncertainty about the rational opponent's hand, doing this feels too aggressive, and there is also the question of bet sizing.

Another part of the book that I found useful was its discussion of blocker bluffs in PLO, so that if you hold a pair of the rank that the opponent would need to have a straight, it is unlikely for him to have it, so you can pretend that you have the straight. The examples illustrate situations in which blocker bluffs are likely to work, and where they are not.

Speaking of Sam Farha, I was delighted to find some YouTube videos of his hands that were mentioned in his book and Harrington 3:

• Farha vs. Hudson: very first hand of WSOP 2005, Farha has AT, Hudson has TT, flop comes AAT. There is only one way that that can end.
• Farha vs. Curtis: later in same tourney, Farha's 33 flops a set and crack's AA that Curtis holds. This hand nicely illustrates the mistake of offering too high implied odds for pocket pairs and their set mining. If you raise to 1000 preflop with pocket aces and intend to go all-in for 9000 more if you get a raggedy flop, you are donating EV to all the pocket pair speculators.
  
• Farha vs. Negreanu: On the river, Farha completes a flush with 92s and Daniel Negreanu gives up his straight to stay alive in the tourney.