Pot Limit Omaha the game of choice for online high rollers (April 7, 2008)
If you want to catch a ride to the biggest poker games online, forget about the "Cadillac of poker."
No limit hold'em, by far the most popular game among mere mortals, is virtually
ignored by the highest of high rollers.
You won't get there by HORSE, either.
In a recent study by PokerScout of online poker games with average pots over $10,000,
pot limit Omaha accounted for more than half of the games, making PLO almost four times as popular
as its nearest competitor.
A major contributor to Omaha's dominance is
Full Tilt Poker, which often has one or more
$200/$400 PLO games going. Full Tilt's sponsored pros are frequent players in the "nosebleed" PLO
games, winning and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. David Benyamine, a regular in the game,
recently won $350,000 in less than a day, including two pots over $100,000.
(See
the description and hand replays here.) In all, nearly 90% of the high stakes PLO games
studied were played at Full Tilt Poker.
High rollers in brick-and-mortar venues often prefer mixed games like HORSE, in which a variety
of different poker games are played in succession. Mixed games emphasize a well-rounded poker education,
and many refer to the World Series of Poker's $50,000 HORSE championship as "the real main event."
Mixed games are a relatively new phenomenon online, however, and HORSE garnered only a 16% share of high stakes games,
nosing ahead of no limit hold'em with 15%.
The only other games which (rarely) saw average pots over $10,000 were $1000/$2000 limit 7 card stud
hi/lo and $1000/$2000 limit hold'em.
