Fernando ‘JNANDEZ’ Habegger’s poker beginnings mirror those of many players inspired by Chris Moneymaker’s fairytale finish at the 2003 WSOP Main Event.
“I dabbled between no-limit hold'em and limit hold 'em online,” says Habegger. “I grew up in Switzerland. There wasn't really a live poker scene like there is in the USA, but through the internet, the Moneymaker boom already was present even in Europe and Switzerland around poker.”
As he moved up in stakes, Habegger became increasingly curious about the four-card game of pot-limit Omaha, which was just beginning to surge in popularity.
“Learning PLO was something that was very satisfying, just the learning aspect in itself. But back in 2011, you didn't really have the tools you have today. The learning was all over the place because different people had different approaches.
"My journey really started with just asking: 'How do I learn this myself? How do I even make sense of what would be right and what would be wrong?'”
A couple of years later, Phil Galfond of the Run It Once training site was looking for member reviews. Habegger submitted a video of himself playing PLO for feedback from the three-time WSOP champion.
“Phil said he was positively surprised at my submission,” shares Habegger. “He asked me, ‘Why don't you just coach? Because the way you play seems really good.’ So, I made my first coaching video and continued until I had made 26 of them.”
Then, in 2017, Habegger was introduced to a publicly available PLO solver, which changed everything he had learned up to that point.
“Basically, through all these cycles, I refined how I thought about the game. I also learned how to teach the game in different ways to all kinds of audiences.
"This led to sharing what I had learned in a book. It eventually evolved into Master Small Stakes Pot Limit Omaha, published by D+B Poker."
Habegger's first PLO book was designed for players who didn't want to jump straight into solver software to learn the game.
Released in 2020, it became a bestseller for D+B Poker as pot-limit Omaha's popularity continued to grow.
New book release this fall
This fall, Habegger and D+B Poker will release his latest PLO book, 100 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha.
“What we have done in the second book is much more of a practical way of walking through hands,” says Habegger. “You basically have a hundred hands and quiz questions packed to assist in understanding concepts around the game.”
Habegger has never pushed the idea of memorization as the best way to learn PLO. Instead, he prefers teaching the concepts that drive sound decision-making.
“In PLO, you have so many more combinations that it is completely impossible to look at your hand and memorize how this hand is supposed to be played.
"So right from the beginning, we took a hundred hands and isolated 8-10 different variables around the hand: how deep you are, if you're in position, out of position, do you have a range advantage or not, etc. We changed those variables from question to question to make the reader realize how that would change the decision.”
Habegger points out that many players miss the variables that determine how a PLO hand should be played from start to finish, which shows that there is a lack of understanding of what really triggers the multitude of decisions in a hand one way or the other.
“The new book, 100 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha, highlights that by isolating these variables and making it clearer that when you look at a hand, you need to understand the stack-to-pot ratio, your position, and how your hand will play on consecutive streets. And that's basically the idea of breaking down the various concepts within the hand histories in the book."
Stay tuned for an in-depth conversation with Fernando Habegger in the next episode of PokerOrg's The Interview, coming soon.
Habegger's 100 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha will be released this fall through D+B Poker.
Follow Fernando on X or visit Habegger’s PLO Mastermind website for more info.
