Preflop is where Omaha bankrolls leak fastest, because a marginal four-card hand rarely feels marginal while you are holding it. There are 270,725 possible PLO starting hands (more than 200 times Hold'em's count), each one contains six two-card combinations, and most of them are folds. This guide covers the archetypes worth raising, the real equity numbers behind the famous AAKK double suited, and the traps that look premium right up until the stacks go in.
Disclosure: This guide is published by GTO Gecko, which makes PLO Gecko, the Omaha trainer mentioned in the practice section. Strategy advice and product description are kept separate.
What Makes a Strong PLO Starting Hand?
A strong PLO starting hand is four cards working as a team: connected enough to make nut straights, suited to a high card, and carrying no dead weight. Because Omaha requires exactly two hole cards and three board cards at showdown (Omaha rules), your hand is really six two-card hands played at once. Every card that fails to link with the others deletes three of those six combinations.
Four checks separate teams from card piles:
- Connectedness. Count how many of the six two-card combinations can make a straight. J T 9 8 has all six pulling in the same direction; K Q 7 2 has one.
- Suitedness class. Every Omaha hand is rainbow, single suited, double suited, triple suited, or monotone. Double suited is the premium class, worth about six points of raw equity on its own, as the simulations below show.
- Nut potential. Count realistic routes to the nuts: nut flush, nut straight, top set. Two or more routes let you commit a stack. Hands built from second-best routes win small pots and lose big ones.
- No danglers. A dangler connects with nothing. A K Q with a lone 3 plays three cards against opponents playing four, and our simulation puts A K Q 3 rainbow at just 51.5 percent against a random hand, despite the three broadway cards.
Our PLO strategy guide develops this selection framework in depth, with worked examples. This article goes one level down: what the filters produce, hand type by hand type. If range grids are new to you, our guide to understanding poker ranges covers the basics.
The Five PLO Starting Hand Archetypes
Nearly every hand worth a preflop raise belongs to one of four families, and the fifth row below is the imposter that costs Hold'em converts the most money.
| Archetype | Example | Why it makes money | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Double-suited broadway | A♠K♠Q♥J♥ | Six connected combos, a nut flush route, dominates other big-card hands | The rainbow version drops a full tier |
| Rundown | J♠T♦9♠8♦ | Flops wraps and nut straights on middle boards nobody puts you on | Gaps, especially near the top, and low versions that make non-nut hands |
| Suited ace plus connectors | A♠T♠9♥8♥ | The nut flush route attached to straight cards, strong in multiway pots | A weak fourth card turns it into a three-card hand |
| Big pair with support | K♠K♥Q♠J♥ | Top set, straights, and flushes stack up in the same hand | The same pair with two dead cards is a different hand entirely |
| Pretty trash | K♥Q♣9♦4♠ | It does not. Four big-looking cards with no teamwork | Second-best straights, no flush, one dead card |
The word "support" in the fourth row is doing real work. Kings with Q J suited to both kings win three ways; kings with 8 3 offsuit win one, and only when the flop cooperates. The same rule sends A A 7 2 rainbow to the traps section below.
Suitedness deserves the same scrutiny: which card carries the suit matters more than how many suits you hold, because the queen-high flush is often the hand that pays off the ace-high one. Double-suited hands with an ace or king on top are the class solvers reward most, a pattern you can check against plo.com's double-suited hand breakdown or any solved range viewer.
Is AAKK Double Suited Really the Best PLO Starting Hand?
Yes. A♠A♦K♠K♦ tops every credible ranking of best PLO starting hands: the highest pair, the second-highest pair, and two nut or near-nut flush routes. What the ranking hides is how small the crown is. We ran 400,000-deal Monte Carlo simulations, all-in preflop with ties split, to put numbers on it. (PLO Gecko ships a Monte Carlo equity calculator if you want to test your own matchups.)
| Preflop all-in matchup | Equity | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| AAKK ds vs one random hand | 71 vs 29 | Hold'em aces are an 85 percent favorite in the same spot. The drop to 71 is the whole story of Omaha |
| AAKK ds vs J T 9 8 ds | 66 vs 34 | The classic cooler matchup is only 2 to 1 |
| AAKK ds vs three random hands | 45 vs 55 | Multiway, the best hand in the game is an underdog to the field |
| AAKK rainbow vs one random hand | 65 vs 35 | Losing both suits costs six points before the flop and more after it |
| AAKK ds vs A A 7 2 rainbow | 62 vs 38 | Both hands hold aces. The support cards are the entire difference |
Context decides how much that 66 or 71 is worth. These numbers assume all the money goes in preflop, and at 100 big blinds it rarely does: pot-limit betting caps the preflop pot, so most of the stack goes in after a flop that usually gives AAKK one pair. The hand performs best where it can force money in early: 3-bet and 4-bet pots, short stacks, heads-up play. In a five-way limped pot at deep stacks it is a pair of aces with backup. Raw equity is also not expected value, a distinction our poker equity guide unpacks.
Which PLO Starting Hands Are Traps?
The three most expensive traps are bare aces, low or gapped rundowns, and hands drowning in one suit. Each passes a Hold'em eye test and fails the four-card checks.
Bare Aces
A♠A♦7♥2♣ against J T 9 8 double suited is a coinflip: 49.6 against 50.3 in our simulation. The monster and the middling rundown are dead even before the flop, and after it the rundown has the playability edge.
Bare aces still make money when stacks are short enough, or the pot 3-bet enough, that most of the money goes in preflop while they are still ahead. The trap version is calling deep-stacked, flopping Q 9 8, and paying two pot-sized bets with one pair.
Low and Gapped Rundowns
7♠6♠5♣4♣ holds 46 percent against A♥K♥Q♦J♦, and about 44 percent when the broadway hand shares one of its suits. Close, and misleading. The low rundown's straights sit under bigger wraps, its flushes are never the nuts, and every ace-high board improves the opponent's range while missing it completely. Forty-six percent preflop attached to second-best hands postflop is how pretty hands lose whole stacks, one pot-priced call at a time. Our pot odds guide shows why draws to non-nut hands keep failing the price they are offered.
Gaps compound the problem, and where the gap sits matters. J T 9 7, with the gap at the bottom, is stronger than J 9 8 7, with the gap at the top, because connected high cards make the nut end of straights and put your wraps above the board.
Triple Suited and Monotone Hands
A K Q J with four spades looks like a jackpot and plays like a downgrade. Flushes use exactly two of your cards, so two of the four spades are pure waste, and holding four leaves only nine in the deck. Flop two spades and you are drawing to 7 outs where a normal suited hand keeps 9. Solved rankings place monotone and triple-suited hands a clear step below their double-suited twins, which is why range viewers filter by suitedness class.
How Does the Hand Hierarchy Change in PLO5?
Every threshold moves up. Five hole cards produce ten two-card combinations instead of six, drawn from 2,598,960 possible five-card starting hands. With ten combos per player, somebody at the table has nearly always connected with the flop, so equities compress further and non-nut hands lose even more of their value.
Three shifts matter most. Danglers nearly vanish as a filter, since a fifth card usually links with something, so the question becomes how many nut routes the hand carries. Bare high pairs fall further, because unimproved one-pair hands are nearly worthless against ten-combo ranges. And connected, double-suited structures gain, because straight and flush boards arrive more often and only the nut versions get paid.
PLO Gecko's PLO5 preflop ranges are solved at 100 big blinds, so you can look up exactly where a five-card hand sits instead of extrapolating from four-card habits. For the full picture, including postflop play and variance, read our PLO5 strategy guide.
How Do You Drill Starting Hand Discipline?
Pick one position, study the solved range, then drill it blind and review the EV you lost. Hand lists fade in a week. Scored repetitions with feedback are what turn the four checks into reflexes you can run in the two seconds before you act.
This loop is what PLO Gecko (formerly PLO Edge) is built around, and the free tier covers one full loop every day: 50 free range lookups to study a single spot in the range viewer, filtering by suitedness class or hand category and sorting by EV, then 25 free training hands to drill that spot with every decision graded against solver frequencies and EV loss, from perfect through blunder. The paid plans remove the caps, but 25 graded hands a day on one position is a real practice block, not a teaser.
The app's 31 modules span both variants, from raise-first-in through 3-bet pots, squeezes, and blind defense, with 14 dedicated PLO5 preflop modules and progress tracked separately per variant. It runs on iPhone and iPad (App Store, rated 4.5 stars in the US) and on Android (Google Play). Our PLO Gecko walkthrough covers the modules in detail, and if you want the honest comparison against GTO Wizard PLO, PLO Mastermind, and the desktop solvers, including where their postflop libraries beat anything that runs on a phone, read our PLO trainer roundup.
If Hold'em is still your main game, the same drill-and-grade loop exists in GTO Gecko, our NLHE trainer covering cash, MTT, and Spin and Go ranges. Just leave its starting-hand instincts at the door when you sit down in an Omaha game.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best starting hand in PLO?
AAKK double suited. In our 400,000-deal simulation it wins 71 percent against one random hand and 66 percent against J T 9 8 double suited, the strongest hand that commonly plays back at it. Against three opponents it drops to 45 percent, so even the best hand wants to shrink the field and get money in preflop.
Are bare aces worth playing in PLO?
Sometimes. Aces with two disconnected offsuit cards are roughly a coinflip against a good double-suited rundown, so their value lives almost entirely preflop. Raise and 3-bet them when stacks are short enough to get most of the money in before the flop. Deep-stacked and multiway, treat them as one strong pair and fold when the betting turns hostile.
Is double suited always better than single suited?
With the same ranks, yes. Our simulations show the jump from rainbow to double suited is worth about six points of preflop equity, before counting the postflop playability. But which card carries the suit matters more than the count: an ace-high flush route wins stacks, while a seven-high flush route is often the hand that pays them.
What percentage of hands should you open in PLO?
There is no single number worth memorizing, because solved ranges open far tighter from early position than from the button, and the boundary hands are exactly the pretty-trash class this guide warns about. Study the range for one position at a time in a solved viewer and learn its boundaries, rather than adopting a table-wide percentage.
Do the same starting hand rules apply in PLO5?
The four checks still apply, but the weights shift. Danglers mostly disappear since a fifth card usually connects, so nut potential becomes the dominant filter. Bare big pairs get weaker, connected double-suited hands get stronger, and second-best draws get even more expensive. PLO5 punishes loose four-card habits faster than PLO4 does.
Fold the Card Piles, Raise the Teams
Starting hand discipline is the cheapest edge in Omaha, because your opponents' pretty trash pays for your patience. Run the four checks on every hand tonight, then make it stick: open one solved range in PLO Gecko, study where the archetypes enter and leave it, and spend your 25 free daily hands drilling that one spot until folding K Q 9 4 feels automatic.