Book Review: Secrets of Short-handed Pot-Limit Omaha

Three years after his first PLO book, Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha, Rolf Slotboom gets back to our favorite four-card game, with his new book dedicated to short-handed (6max) games. His previous PLO book was clearly full-ring oriented with shortstacking being the core of his strategy, so it will be interesting to see how Rolf adapted to 6max games.

This time, Rob Hollink, a high-stakes PLO player, contributed to the book with a whole chapter on the big games he plays. On the menu: more than thirty hands with durrrr, Ziigmund, Patrik Antonius or OMGClayAiken!

This is enough to make me curious, so without further ado let’s see what the authors have to say.

The book is 330 pages, divided into six chapters. The first five chapters are penned by Rolf, and Rob Hollink wrote the last one.

In the preface, Rolf explains that he signed a deal with the T-6 poker room (that has gone belly up since then) in early 2008, which included logging in a set amount of hours playing on their shorthanded-only room. Begone the “exploitation of badly structured game that my shortstacked full-ring approach was based on”, as Rolf worded it.

Chapter One (17 pages) relates the start of Rolf’s journey within short-handed territory. It enumerates the crucial differences between full-ring and 6max games regarding shortstacking, and it rapidly concludes that playing with a 20BB stack is no longer an attractive option, even for short stacks aficionados. Thus, he made a plan in five steps to move from short stack to full stack play, sharing his notes and remarks for each step.

The technical comments, for instance the change of hands value in 6max games or his choice to always raise to 3BB even after limpers, are rather short, but clearly explained nonetheless. This is more of a detailed report than a textbook, though.

Chapter Two (42 pages) deals with stack sizes and how it should affect your play. Given Rolf’s style and background, he got the opportunity to think about and experiment with the pros and cons of various stack sizes. He gives a deeper explanation of why shortstacking is less good in 6max games, then he analyzes four hands (aces, kings, slightly connected suite ace, and mid rundown, all double-suited) in three different preflop situations (OTB after a limper, defending one’s SB against a BTN open-raise, and in the CO facing an UTG minraise with an aggro BTN yet to act), with three different stack sizes (20, 40 and 120BB).

It is a pretty good idea, since many players do not pay enough attention to this factor. It also shows how important it is to have a plan with your hand. Unfortunately, it spends a bit too much time examining the 20 and 40BB stacks, while the 120BB one is just the “generic big stack”. I would have preferred stack sizes of, say, 40, 70 and 100BB. If you like shortstacking, it will be just fine for you, though. An instructive chapter overall.

Chapter Three (42 pages) is about bet sizing after the flop. Again, the three aforementioned stack sizes are discussed. Rolf is still fond of his peculiar moves, like the minbet and the minraises, with a good deal of check-raises — which definitely have some merits with shorter stacks, when you want to trap your opponents and put in the last raise. As for the 120BB stack, he prefers not betting the full pot both preflop and postflop, but on the whole his recommendations do not deviate too much from “standard” play with 100BB stacks.

It touches on donk bets, delayed bluffs
and value bets, check-raises […]
Certainly worth reading.

He also gives several tips for playing each street, in the last twenty pages or so, and this part is pretty good actually. It touches on donk bets, delayed bluffs and value bets, check-raises to defend against floats, along with some typical timing tells and other usual lines betraying great strength or weakness. Certainly worth reading.

Chapter Four (20 pages) focuses on several player’s profiles, collected from the opponents the author faced on the room that sponsored him. It is a chapter about adjusting one’s game: how to adapt against nits, LAGs, serial 3bettors, passive players etc. The reader will probably meet some opponents who show parts of those traits, so it will be helpful to already have an idea of what to do against them.

Chapter Five (75 pages) is called Advanced Plays, Tricks and Moves. All the plays are thoroughly examined, including those already mentioned, like the delayed bluffs or the donk bets. There is also advice for playing against short stacks, how to represent big hands, or how to play the river according to your hand strength. It covers a lot of topics, and many important concepts (like “protected” or “locked” boards, or balancing one’s play) are mentioned, more or less quickly. It sometimes jumps a bit from one subject to another, but the title announced that there would be no strict plan here.

Chapter Six is that of Rob Hollink and contains thirty-three high-stakes hand discussions, in about 110 pages. Rob picked hands that could seem controversial, either because of excessive action, wild bluffing or on the contrary, timid play. His opponents count some big names, like those we already cited (Dwan, Galfond, Antonius) or not (Townsend), so there are many tough situations, where sometimes even the author is not sure about his play.

This chapter adds a lot of value.

Most hands are interesting, and the analyses are supported with some maths when required. The reader probably will not be able to pull off all these plays in their games, but the insight and the way of thinking are always useful. This chapter adds a lot of value to the book.

The book ends with a few pages on profile stats, like VPIP/PFR etc., as an appendix.

Recommended? Yes, if you are not a beginner

Secrets of Short-handed Pot-Limit Omaha is an interesting book: many good and important things are said, and the last chapter is a great plus. However, it perhaps could have been better organized, and there are still a few typos or weird sentences here and there. Furthermore, the short stacks discussions somewhat get in the way at times, especially if this is not your cup of tea (it’s not mine). Maybe it would have been better to put all the short stack material in a single chapter on its own.

Even if the content is not that advanced, if you are starting out, you should probably look for something closer to a textbook, containing charts of hands to play according to position, equity tables etc. But if you are a bit more experienced, there will be many ideas to pick in this book, even if you do not strictly follow Rolf’s style.

Here’s Rolf Slotboom’s page about the book.

Note: I received a review copy of this book.