PLO Glossary
Last updated July 25, 2026 · ~10 min read
Pot-Limit Omaha borrows most of its vocabulary from Hold'em and then adds a layer of its own — wraps, danglers, rundowns, freerolls. This glossary defines the terms you will meet at the table and in strategy content, in plain English, with the context that makes each one useful rather than just decodable.
Starting hands
Rundown
A hand of consecutive ranks — JT98, 8765. Rundowns are the archetypal
Omaha holding because every card works with every other one, so they flop straights, wraps and
big draws far more often than disconnected hands. A rundown with gaps (JT87) is
still strong; the gap costs some straight combinations but not the hand's character.
Double-suited (ds)
Two separate suited pairs, e.g. A♠K♠J♥T♥. Double-suited hands carry two flush draws
and are meaningfully stronger than the same ranks single-suited. Written as "AKJTds" in hand
notation. Single-suited means one suited pair; rainbow means no two cards share a suit.
Dangler
A card that does not work with the rest of your hand — the 2 in
KQJ2. Danglers matter more than beginners expect: your hand's strength comes from
the number of useful two-card combinations it makes, and a dangler silently deletes several of
them. A four-card hand has six two-card combinations; one dangler removes three from
meaningful play.
Trap hand
A hand that looks strong and is structurally weak — low double-suited holdings, or hands that make second-best flushes and low-end straights. They win small pots and lose large ones. See PLO4 starting hands and PLO5 starting hands.
Bare aces
AAxx with no suits and no connectivity, e.g. A♠A♥7♦2♣. Playable
preflop and awkward after the flop, because it usually has to win unimproved. Compare
A♠A♥K♠Q♥, which is a different class of hand entirely.
Draws and made hands
Wrap
A straight draw using several of your cards around the board's connectors, giving 9 to 20 outs where Hold'em maxes out at 8. The signature Omaha draw and the reason flop all-ins are often close to coin flips. Full detail in PLO odds and outs.
Nut draw / non-nut draw
A draw to the best possible version of a hand, versus a draw to a second-best one. In Omaha the distinction is worth more than the size of the draw: twelve clean outs beats seventeen dirty ones, because non-nut draws pay off the nut version when they hit.
Freeroll
When two hands make the same made hand but one holds a draw to a better version. The freerolling player cannot lose the pot — worst case they split, best case they scoop. Common in Omaha because shared straights are frequent.
Redraw
A draw held on top of a made hand — for example a set that also holds a flush draw. Redraws are what make a hand safe to commit stacks with, because the hand can improve when it is behind and defend itself when the board changes.
Blocker
A card in your hand that removes possibilities from your opponent's range. Holding the ace of spades on a three-spade board means no opponent has the nut flush. Blockers drive both bluffing and folding decisions — see blockers in PLO.
The nuts
The best possible hand given the board. In Omaha the nuts change constantly, and reading the current nuts on every street is a core skill rather than an occasional check.
Betting and structure
Pot-limit
The betting structure: the maximum bet is the size of the pot. The maximum raise equals three times the last bet plus everything else already in the pot. See the rules guide for worked examples.
SPR (stack-to-pot ratio)
Effective stack divided by pot size, measured on the flop. Low SPR (under 3) means one pot-sized bet commits you, so hand strength requirements drop. High SPR (above 10) means implied odds and nut potential dominate. SPR is the single most useful number for planning a hand — see postflop strategy.
Effective stack
The smaller of the two stacks in a confrontation — the most that can actually change hands. Always the number that matters, never your own stack in isolation.
RFI (raise first in)
Opening the pot with a raise when nobody has entered before you. An "RFI range" is the set of hands a position opens with. The range browser shows solver RFI ranges for every seat.
3-bet, 4-bet, squeeze
A 3-bet is the first re-raise; a 4-bet is the raise after that. A squeeze is a 3-bet made after one player has opened and one or more have called — the caller is "squeezed" between two aggressors and needs a much stronger hand to continue.
Cold call
Calling a raise without having money already invested. In PLO cold calling is more defensible than in Hold'em, because hands realise their equity well multiway — but it still invites the players behind into the pot.
Postflop concepts
Nut discipline
Folding strong-looking non-nut hands in spots where only the nuts wins a big pot. The single habit that separates winning PLO players from losing ones, and the hardest to acquire because the hands you fold look good.
Equity realisation
How much of your theoretical equity you actually collect. A hand can be 45% to win and realise far less if it must fold to pressure, or far more if it has position and a nut redraw. Equity is what the calculator says; realisation is what your stack says.
Board texture
How connected and coordinated the community cards are. In Omaha almost every board is coordinated relative to Hold'em, so "dry" is relative — a paired rainbow board is the closest the game gets.
Multiway pot
Three or more players seeing a flop. Multiway is the default in live and low-stakes PLO, and it shifts everything toward the nuts: bluffs work less, non-nut draws lose more, and pot control matters more.
Barrel
A continued bet on a later street — a "second barrel" on the turn, "third barrel" on the river. Barrelling in PLO requires more equity than in Hold'em because opponents fold less often.
Formats and variants
PLO4 / PLO5 / PLO6
Omaha with four, five or six hole cards. Same rules, same exactly-two-cards requirement, more combinations each step up: 6, 10 and 15 two-card combinations respectively. See PLO5 vs PLO4 and the PLO6 guide.
Bomb pot
A pre-arranged pot where every player antes and the flop is dealt with no preflop betting. Common in live games as an action-generator.
Double board bomb pot (DBBP)
A bomb pot dealt with two separate boards; the pot is split between the winner of each unless one player scoops both. Because the boards share a deck they are not independent events — see the double board bomb pot guide and the DBBP calculator.
Scoop
Winning the whole pot. In double board formats scooping is the entire objective — half-pot wins barely beat breaking even once rake is counted, which is why nut-or-fold play is correct there.
Study terms
GTO (game theory optimal)
A strategy that cannot be exploited regardless of what opponents do. Solver ranges approximate it. GTO is a baseline to understand, not a script to follow blindly — most profit at low stakes comes from deviating against known mistakes.
EV (expected value)
The average result of a decision over the long run, measured here in big blinds. The range browser shows EV per action so you can see what an error actually costs — usually less than players fear, occasionally much more.
Mixed strategy
Playing the same hand more than one way at set frequencies — folding 40% and calling 60%, for example. Mixing exists to stop opponents reading your range. In practice, picking the higher-EV action every time costs very little.
Range
All the hands a player can hold in a given spot. Thinking in ranges rather than specific hands is the fundamental shift from beginner to intermediate play.
Put the vocabulary to work
Terms stick when attached to real decisions. Open the range browser, pick a position, and look at which shapes the solver keeps — you will see rundowns, danglers and double-suited hands sorting themselves. Then hit the trainer and play the spot until the language becomes instinct.