★ Glossary

Speak PLO

34 terms, alphabetical. Every entry has its own anchor — link straight to /glossary#wrap from anywhere.

B

Backdoor#: A draw that needs both the turn and the river to complete — e.g. holding two spades on a one-spade flop. Individually weak, but in PLO the sum of many backdoor possibilities meaningfully boosts a hand's equity and playability.Equity Wrap
Blockers#: Cards in your hand that reduce the combinations of strong hands your opponent can hold. Holding the ace of spades on a three-spade board blocks the nut flush; in PLO, with four hole cards each, blocker effects are stronger and drive many bluffing decisions.Nut flush Bluff catcher
Bluff catcher#: A hand that can only win by calling down against a bluff — it beats bluffs but loses to every value hand. Because PLO ranges are wider but the nuts appear more often, medium-strength bluff catchers are worth far less than in Hold'em.Blockers

D

Dangler#: A fourth card that doesn't coordinate with the other three — e.g. the 2 in K-Q-J-2. A dangler turns a four-card hand into a three-card hand: it removes a quarter of your two-card combinations and adds almost no equity.Double-suited Rundown
Double pair#: A starting hand with two pairs, like K-K-9-9. Its main way to win is flopping a set (roughly a 1-in-4 chance with two pairs in hand), so quality depends heavily on how high the pairs are and whether the hand is suited.Set Top set
Double-suited#: A starting hand with two cards of one suit and two of another, written “ds” — e.g. A♠A♥K♠K♥. Double-suited hands can make two different flushes and gain roughly 4–6% equity over their rainbow versions, a huge margin in a game where edges are thin.Single-suited Rainbow Suitedness
Dry aces (naked aces)#: A-A with two disconnected, unsuited side cards, like A♠A♦9♣4♥. Great at winning small pots preflop, terrible at playing big pots postflop: unimproved aces are almost never good in a pot-sized multi-street battle. The classic NLHE-transition trap.Dangler Set

E

Equity#: Your hand's share of the pot if all remaining cards were dealt out — the probability-weighted percentage of the pot you'd win at showdown. PLO equities run much closer together than Hold'em equities, which is why the game is played around draws and the nuts.Freeroll Equity distribution
Equity distribution#: How a hand's equity is spread across runouts. Two hands with 50% equity can be very different: one wins half the pot often (a made hand vs a draw), another wins the whole pot half the time. Nut draws have equity that is concentrated in winning big pots.Equity Nut potential

F

Flopped nuts#: The best possible hand given the three flop cards. In PLO the flopped nuts change on most turns and rivers, so “nuts now” is not “nuts later” — a key reason position and redraws matter so much.The nuts Redraw
Freeroll#: A spot where two players have the same current hand but one can improve and the other can't. Classic PLO example: both players hold the ace-high straight, but one also has a flush draw or set redraw — that player can only chop or win. Freerolls are where the biggest PLO pots come from.Redraw Equity

G

Gapped wrap#: A wrap draw with an internal gap, e.g. holding 9-8-6-5 on a 7-4-x flop. Still a big draw, but some of its outs make non-nut straights — always count which of your straight outs are to the nuts.Wrap Nut potential

M

Multiway pot#: A pot with three or more players. Far more common in PLO than NLHE because equities run close and pot-limit betting can't fully price players out preflop. In multiway pots, nut potential dominates: someone usually gets there.Nut potential Equity

N

Nut flush#: The best possible flush — ace-high in the flush suit. In PLO, drawing to non-nut flushes is a chronic bankroll leak: when the flush hits and big money goes in, the second-best flush is often exactly what it's paying off.The nuts Blockers
Nut potential#: A hand's capacity to make the best possible hand rather than the second-best one. The core PLO hand-selection criterion: big pots go to the nuts, so cards that can only make non-nut hands (low flushes, bottom-end straights, undersets) have negative implied odds.The nuts Reverse implied odds

O

Overpair#: A pocket pair higher than every board card. In Hold'em an overpair is often a big hand; in PLO an unimproved overpair — even aces — is rarely strong enough to play a large pot. Treat it as one modest piece of a four-card hand.Dry aces (naked aces)Set

P

PLO Hi/Lo (Omaha 8)#: A split-pot Omaha variant where the best high hand splits with the best qualifying low hand (five unpaired cards 8 or lower). Everything on this site refers to high-only PLO unless noted.
Pot (bet)#: The maximum legal bet in pot-limit games: the size of the pot after your call. Formula for a raise: call amount + (pot + all bets on the table + your call). Announcing “pot” commits you to exactly this amount.Pot-limit Repot
Pot-limit#: A betting structure where the maximum bet or raise equals the size of the pot (computed after your call). It caps preflop raises, makes overbets impossible, and shifts leverage to later streets as the pot grows geometrically.Pot (bet)SPR (stack-to-pot ratio)

Q

Quartered#: In split-pot games, winning only one half of one half of the pot — usually by chopping the low. Mostly relevant to PLO Hi/Lo, but chopped high pots (shared straights) happen constantly in regular PLO too.PLO Hi/Lo (Omaha 8)

R

Rainbow#: Cards of all different suits — a rainbow flop (three suits) can't yet make a flush; a rainbow starting hand (four suits) can never make one. Rainbow starting hands give up several points of equity versus their suited versions.Double-suited Single-suited
Redraw#: A draw to an even better hand while you already hold a made hand — e.g. the nut straight with a flush draw on the side. Redraws are what separate “thin” nuts from real nuts in PLO, and what lets you stack someone who flopped the same straight.Freeroll Flopped nuts
Repot#: To raise the maximum (pot) over a previous bet or raise. The standard preflop aggression in PLO: raise pot, repot. Because the pot grows with each raise, two repots build a huge pot fast even with capped sizing.Pot (bet)Pot-limit
Reverse implied odds#: The money you lose on later streets when you make your hand but it's second-best. The defining PLO leak: non-nut draws often have fine direct odds and disastrous reverse implied odds.Nut potential Nut flush
Rundown#: Four consecutive cards, like J-T-9-8. The premier drawing structure in PLO: rundowns flop wraps and two-pair combinations constantly, and the best ones (suited, high, no gaps) are favorites or near-coinflips even against aces.Wrap Dangler

S

Set#: Three of a kind made with a pocket pair and one board card. With four hole cards, sets are common in PLO — which is why undersets (a set below the board's top set) lose fortunes. Set-over-set is a standard cooler, not a rarity.Top set Double pair
Single-suited#: A starting hand with exactly two cards of one suit (written “ss”), giving one flush possibility. Better than rainbow, clearly worse than double-suited. A♠ single-suited hands carry the valuable nut-flush possibility.Double-suited Rainbow
Smooth call (flat)#: Calling a raise with a hand strong enough to reraise, to keep ranges wide or disguise strength. Common in PLO with position: many strong-but-vulnerable hands prefer seeing a flop in a smaller pot.
SPR (stack-to-pot ratio)#: Effective stack divided by pot size at the start of a street. Pot-limit betting means one pot-bet per street roughly triples the pot, so an SPR near 1 means one bet gets stacks in, while SPR 10+ leaves room for multi-street play. PLO decisions lean on SPR even more than NLHE ones.Pot-limit Pot (bet)
Suitedness#: How a starting hand's suits are arranged: double-suited, single-suited, or rainbow. One of the three pillars of PLO hand strength alongside high-card value and connectedness.Double-suited Single-suited Rainbow

T

The nuts#: The best possible hand at a given moment. PLO revolves around it: with four cards per player and frequent multiway pots, the nuts or near-nuts is usually the hand collecting the big pots.Flopped nuts Nut potential
Top set#: A set made with the highest card on the board — e.g. aces on an A-9-4 flop. The gold standard of made flop hands in PLO: it beats all other sets and redraws to the best full houses.Set Redraw

W

Wheel#: The five-high straight, A-2-3-4-5. The ace plays low. In high-only PLO the wheel is the weakest straight and frequently loses to bigger straights — low rundowns that flop it should proceed with caution.Rundown
Wrap#: A straight draw with more outs than Hold'em allows — hole cards “wrapped” around the board. Example: 9-8-6-5 around a 7-4-x flop, or the monster 13-out (and up to 20-out) wraps like J-T-9 on Q-8-x. Big wraps are often equity favorites against flopped sets.Rundown Gapped wrap