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Transitioning from NLHE to PLO Review

Pot Limit Omaha has made a reputation in online poker circles as the high stakes game of choice over the last couple of years, but the mid and lower stakes have been slower to catch up. The game is certainly more complex than NLHE on some levels, more difficult to effectively multi-table, and has a more fearsome variance built in. As NLHE games become increasingly tougher and the market for training materials becomes more and more saturated, however, PLO is becoming a game that small to midstakes players are increasingly eying as a viable alternative to NLHE. It’s with those players in mind that Tri ‘SlowHabit’ Nguyen authored ‘The Pot Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLHE to PLO’.

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Overview
Poker book titles are awesome, insomuch that they generally tell you exactly what the exact focus of the book is. Nguyen’s is no exception – his core aim is to provide a text that will assist players making the transition from no limit holdem to pot limit omaha. The book can also just be read as a cold introduction to PLO, but the phrasing and examples in the book often provide readers with supplemental NLHE – PLO translations of certain concepts and ranges.

The book is only available as an eBook (DRM protected) and is about 80 pages long. Nguyen may be most familiar to some readers as the co-author, with Cole (CTS) South, of ‘Let There Be Range’, another eBook that focuses on mid-stakes NL online games.

Pros
A core advantage of this book is that it clearly fills a need in the market. You simply won’t find more than a handful of books on PLO strategy, and even fewer that are current. Of those, a few provide insights on short-handed play, one or two accommodate experienced no limit players, and none are aimed at modern online games.

Filling this need would be an irrelevant edge if Nguyen didn’t follow through with a well-executed text. From the point of view of a player who fits Nguyen’s intended audience (I’m currently in the early stages of making a partial transition from NLHE to PLO), I can confidently say he has. The book is a no-frills, information-packed primer for experienced poker players who are somewhat new to PLO. Concepts are explained in a tight, logical order, building upon and expanding previously introduced ideas. Nguyen does a good job of digging into the math behind PLO in a fairly accessible manner and provides quick analysis of real-world hand examples to illustrate and summarize core concepts.

The translations of PLO concepts and ranges for NLHE are especially helpful. There are some issues that NLHE players are uniquely likely to have when making the switch to PLO, and also some shortcuts that NLHE are uniquely equipped to employ. Nguyen does NLHE players a valuable service by repeatedly highlighting such points in clear, precise terms.

What about the scope of the content? That’s likely a concern for some potential readers, given the somewhat abbreviated length of the book at 80 pages. Again, Nguyen comes through with a table of contents that provides a comprehensive overview of PLO play on all streets (the river is abbreviated, but that’s not unusual for a PLO text, as river decisions are heavily player-dependent and not as complex as NLHE river decisions). While he certainly doesn’t (and realistically can’t be expected to) cover every possible line in every possible scenario, Nguyen excels at a smarter approach – digging into concepts that give readers the building blocks to analyze the game and construct responses to uncovered scenarios on their own.

Cons
Price: $367. You can also purchase just the first half of the book (covering core concepts and preflop play) for $47 and then purchase the second half for a little over the remainder of the price. The total number may put this text out of reach for a recreational or low-stakes player.

The text would certainly benefit from a quick pass by an editor and another pass by someone with layout experience. Minor grammatical errors and odd phrasing sometimes interrupts the flow for the reader. On the layout side: the blunt manner in which graphs and charts are inserted, along with a very spartan approach to headers and a lack of embedded quotes, results in a reading experience that’s a bit dry, even for a poker book.

Conclusion
If you’re in the target audience for this book – a NLHE player with limited PLO experience looking to transition to SSPLO – you’re unlikely to find a resource to rival it. Buy it now, or at the very least preview the first half on the cheap and make your mind up from there.

Focus: 9/10
Spartan, almost to a fault.

Quality of advice: 9/10
Feels dead on. Only missed a 10/10 because it’s not earth-shattering so much as a quality collection of rock-solid fundamental advice.

Examples: 7/10
They’re always appropriate, but there’s not always enough of them. Nguyen does a great job at cutting to the quick when reviewing hand examples, so it’s odd that there aren’t more included.

Readability: 7/10
Small errors are distracting, and the layout isn’t as inviting as it could be.

Overall (not an average): 9/10
We generally give our overall rating on the quality of the book for it’s intended audience, and by that metric this book excels.

VERDICT: Moving to SSPLO from NLHE? Buy the book. Want to learn PLO from scratch? Start with a cheaper book designed for that and graduate to this when you’re ready to move on and move up.

Learn more about the book and how to purchase at DailyVariance.com

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