Playing 4-Bet Pots
Low SPR, aces-heavy ranges and simple strategies
4-bet pots at 100 big blinds leave an SPR below 1 on the flop — one pot-sized bet and everyone is all-in. That makes them simpler than they look, as long as you understand one thing: what is in the 4-bettor's range.
The 4-betting range is mostly aces
In 4-card PLO about half of a typical 4-betting range is aces; the rest is AKK-type hands and double-suited rundowns. In PLO5 aces make up roughly 85% of the range, with a small number of high double-suited unpaired hands and almost no other pairs. Two consequences:
- The 4-bettor's range is extremely strong on most flops, especially paired ones.
- Because not all aces 4-bet, the aces that do usually have some backup. The weakest aces just call 3-bets — if you find yourself in 4-bet pots with bare, disconnected aces too often, revisit your preflop strategy.
The examples below come from the cutoff 4-betting against a button 3-bet, playing out of position.
Dry, paired, rainbow boards: bet small with everything
On boards like K-4-4 rainbow the solver bets almost its entire range for about a quarter of the pot. Across disconnected paired rainbow boards, the average strategy is roughly 85–90% small bets, with a few jams and a few checks. A perfectly good simplification:
Bet your entire range for about 25% of the pot on disconnected, paired, rainbow flops. Don't jam, don't check.
Your opponent can't do much about it: your range is full of aces, and aces on a paired board remain strong at this SPR.
Connected paired boards: jam or check
On boards with many straight draws, such as T-9-9 or J-8-8, the picture changes. The solver jams around 80% of the time and splits the rest between small bets and checks. A practical approach is to choose two actions: jam, plus either a small bet or a check for the rest of your range. Using three different actions adds complexity with little gain.
Which hands jam? Mostly medium-strength aces — the depolarised middle of your range. Don't be scared of "he has five cards, he must have trips". With three side cards, your aces usually have some connection to a connected board: a gutshot, a pair blocker, a backdoor.
The third hand is the trap. Coming from 4-card PLO, top pair with the ace blocker and a backdoor flush draw feels like an easy shove. In PLO5 your opponent continues with too many overpairs, trips and strong draws; you need more equity to stack off.
Flush boards
On disconnected boards with two cards of a suit, the strategy shifts from mostly small bets to a split between small bets and jams. Aces with the nut flush blocker but no draw become interesting bet-fold candidates with a small size, while aces with a real flush draw simply jam.
Summary
- Mediocre aces: get it in on most boards, especially connected ones.
- Very strong hands and weak non-aces hands go into your small-bet or checking range.
- Dry paired rainbow boards: small bet with everything.
- Weak top pairs and bare gutshots are not stack-offs, even at SPR below 1.
- Use an equity calculator after sessions to check your stack-offs: SPR-1 decisions are pure equity questions and easy to review. See How to Study PLO5.