PLO5 variance might be destroying your bankroll (and you’re loving it)

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I’ve been playing PLO variants since the very beginning of my poker player days. It’s the game I have done the most homework for and it’s also the game I made the most money with but honestly, PLO with more than 4 cards, feels like chaos. Not the fun and controlled kind of chaos. The full-ring, five-way-to-the-turn, what-is-even-happening kind.

The Problem isn’t the game. It’s the environment.

In theory, PLO5 is a beautiful, complex game.

In reality, in live full ring multi-way pots, people overplay hands constantly, equities run way closer than anyone admits or knows and virtually every pot becomes massive by default.

… and suddenly, I find myself sitting there on a spicy turn thinking:

‘I would genuinely appreciate two or three minutes of deep analysis and a whiteboard for this decision.’

Instead, I get 10 seconds and a dealer staring at me.

So what do I do? I go full nit. Not because it’s optimal. I’m pretty sure its not. The reason I nit it up is because it’s the only way I’ve found to survive these games without mentally melting. Being mentally less impacted just because I’m losing less to incredible runouts actually gives me an edge in the long run but I recently found a better strategy: skipping them all in all.

There are a few issues with being a nit. Sure, on paper, you want to be a nit on wild tables and a bully in tight games but being a nit in PLO5 or PLO6 makes you very vulnerable to exploits by capable players. Also, being tight and solid like a block of concrete in PLO5, is still exhausting. You’re folding a lot. Sounds easy, but you still have to track multi-way ranges, redraws on redraws, board runouts from another dimension and, at some point, I started to ask myself:

‘Why am I working this hard to fold hands?’

I’m not quite there yet but with PLO4 offer seriously dwindeling and PLO5 or even 6 emerging everywhere over the last years, I have resumed playing NLH games occasionally when I cannot find the fitting PLO4 game I am after.

This is where I’m at mentally right now: if I can’t play PLO4 which I feel very comfortable with since it’s the game I’ve studued most, I might as well go back to No-Limit Hold’em and embrace my inner value-nit properly.

At least there, decisions are clearer, variance is (relatively) reasonable and folding actually feels like a choice, not a survival mechanism.

Also, let’s face it, being a nit in Hold’em is basically a lifestyle.

Here’s another weird dynamic I don’t want to cope with anymore.

A dealer’s choice game. The options are: PLO4, PLO5, PLO6, and Courchevel

You pick PLO4. Silence, stares and suddenly there’s a vibe. Nothing aggressive, but enough to say:

‘Oh… this guy.’

You’re now: the nit, the boring guy the one cooling down the action … From over 10 years of PLO playing, my experience tells me that ‘this guy’ is also among the only ones who will still be around in a few years time.

I’m personally fine with the nit image. It’s become part of the brand at this point.

For beginners or players transitioning from Hold’em, it’s actually a problem.

My call out there to the PLO community is to let people play PLO4. It’s the gateway drug.

My honest take after watching these games across multiple rooms on various continents is that PLO5 or 6 don’t just test bankrolls, they destroy them mid-term. Not even long-term. Mid-term is enough. I’ve seen poker rooms running PLO4 games for years and lacking action after less than a year after switching to more cards resulting in all the regs burning through their bankrolls and the games drying out.

How well can most players handle 20 buy-in downswings? When 2000 big blinds are quickly disappearing, it feels like much but really, it’s not in PLO5 and 6. And the real issue isn’t the math: it’s the reaction to it. The reason being that, once players are stuck, they tilt, they chase and they start playing like absolute maniacs without even being aware of it. These are the games that suddenly get so wild that swings become unbarable.

PLO4 bends minds and can hurt bankrolls. PLO5 can break your mind and hurts even more when variance strikes. The decision trees are very deep (especially multiway on crunchy boards), the equities run very close and the mistakes cost a lot more. In live environments, where volume is low, those swings just linger.

I’ve seen many solid opponents crumble over a few months claiming they could not stand the downswing, not realizing that they were not at all going through a bad stretch of luck – it was just the natural brutality of the game.

I’m not saying not to play PLO5. I’m saying: know what you’re getting into and study, After that, study more and, when you think you’re ready, keep studying. The accessibility of NLH made it possible and acceptable for noobs to sit down at a table with 0 studies and still perform sort of ok in terms of evolving in the game and also in terms of having fun.

In PLO5+ , I don’t see how someone can stand a chance without studying the game seriously and recognizing/respecting the variance. This makes it a lot harder to crush the game and a lot less fun to the general recreational poker peeps.

Maybe… just maybe… one should not be ashamed to pick PLO4 once in a while even if it makes you ‘that guy’ at the table because ‘that guy’ is often the one still sitting there when everyone else has dusted off their bankroll.