Daniel Negreanu has made it crystal clear that pot-limit Omaha (PLO) is his game right now. And the results don't lie.
He cashed in eight PLO events at this summer's WSOP, and won his eighth bracelet and $2,257,718 in the biggest PLO buy-in of the summer – the $100,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller.
But there’s more to Negreanu’s love affair with PLO than his recent results. The GGPoker pro believes the game plays directly into the post-flop instincts he’s spent a lifetime developing.
In our exclusive Q&A, Negreanu shares why PLO has become his game of choice, why skilled players have far more control than many believe, Josh Arieh’s influence on his game, and an insider’s look at his seven-figure heads-up battle against one of PLO’s best.
Negreanu: ‘PLO is my jam’
When you look back at your summer, how big a part of it was PLO?
I'd say the tagline of my summer is this: PLO is my jam. I think I cashed in eight PLO tournaments: the $100K, the $50K, the $25K, the $10K, and the $600. I ran the gamut. It was definitely where my biggest scores came from.
How many times did you have to rebuy in all of those combined events?
Once. There was only one tournament, the $25K, where I had to re-enter. All the rest were on one bullet.
Who has had the biggest influence on your PLO game?
Josh Arieh is really the one who fine-tuned my PLO game over the last couple of years. We’ve talked a lot about strategy.
Why PLO fits Negreanu like a glove
You’ve said PLO suits your game. Why?
The way I would describe it is that preflop, when you’re playing no-limit hold’em, you can make some really big mistakes. You can’t in PLO because the equities run really, really close.
My types of mistakes in PLO are not reraising, four-betting, and all that stuff – it's just playing too many hands, which is fine. You don't get punished for that as you would in no-limit, because the crux of the game is played post-flop.
A guy three-bets you in PLO. So, what? Who cares? I'm happy to have it.
Talk us through an example.
Okay, let’s say I raised in the cutoff in PLO with 8653 and the big blind pots it. Let's go, buddy. I'm excited about this, because again, the hand equities run really close.
I’ve always felt that in no-limit hold’em post-flop, my hand reading skills are much better than preflop. I never really worked on preflop in no-limit hold’em. I hate it. I don't enjoy no-limit hold’em preflop.
Sure, deep-stacked you can be adding some limps into your game. But in PLO, limping is pimpin’ for real. There are a lot of hands and spots where limping is correct, and there are a lot of multi-way pots. It just changes the dynamic in so many ways.
A lot of people look at PLO and think it’s basically a ton of gambling with four cards. You don’t see it that way.
It’s a game where I think that people have this completely backward. PLO is all just gambling? You got it backward. With PLO, you have more control than you do in NLH, by a mile and a half.
Sure, there are times when you get coolered, and you've got to put it in. But that's true in NLH too. Ace-king against queens, you get it in. Sometimes you have to get it in preflop. But the amount of control you have in PLO is 5:1 compared to no-limit hold’em.
I watched the entire heads-up battle with Artur Martirosian. You were clearly having fun with it and even teased him along the way. What was that battle like for you?
It's funny. While we were sitting there heads-up, I told him I had never lost heads-up in PLO. I’ve won over $1,000,000 in cash games. I’ve won every tournament I've ever played heads-up in PLO.
You know what Artur said, ’I’ve also never lost heads-up in PLO'. So, one of us was going to have that record snapped. I was fortunate enough that it wasn't me. But Artur is a very tough opponent.
What was the key to winning the match with Artur?
When we got down to heads-up, he had become handcuffed and in really bad shape because he had completely run out of time banks. He had none.
How much did that change the way you attacked him?
PLO is a very complex game. And you’ll want to make hero calls on the river. So, just for the nerds that like to talk theory – when you think about a hold’em hand, and you're thinking about the combinations of bluffs an opponent has and what value they have. There are only two cards you have to think about.
With PLO, there are four. Now you're trying to run these computations in your mind. I know that's how Artur thinks. I knew with just 30 seconds in many of the big spots, it's very unlikely that he's going to make the hero calls.
So, you adjusted your strategy?
Yes. What did that mean I had to do? That means I had to really go for it in those big spots. There were a couple of spots where if he had called, the tournament would have been over. I would have finished second.
You had an amazing summer. It turned out a little differently than you planned, but in all the very best ways.
It was definitely the summer of PLO for me, where my biggest scores came.
In addition to that, Josh and I really called our shot. We drafted ourselves in the 25K Fantasy, which we were not planning on doing. We had planned on golfing more and taking it easy. But then we said, ‘You know what, LFG, let's go.’ And we did. We did the job.
