Over the last two weeks, the best Pot Limit Omaha players in the world descended upon Las Vegas to play an entire series of events dedicated to the four-card game. As recently as a decade ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to have more than a couple PLO events in a row, let alone a festival along the lines of what was the PokerGO Tour PLO Series.
Some 40 years after PLO first came to Las Vegas, Pot Limit Omaha’s popularity has never been higher – both among the high rollers and throughout the poker ecosystem in general. We’ve reached a point where multiple millionaires are crowned each year in PLO tournaments, as field size records are smashed to pieces.
It feels unlikely, at least at this point, for Pot Limit Omaha to surpass No Limit Hold’em in popularity any time soon, in the way that Hold’em passed Seven Card Stud. But in the hierarchy of games, PLO is on the rise as the clear No. 2 game in the world of poker and shows little sign of slowing down.
Operators have seen the opportunity and potential for growth, and perhaps none more so than the PokerGO Tour. And after two weeks of PGT’s fourth PLO-focused festival in a two-year span, everything culminates on Thursday with a $100,500 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl Pot Limit Omaha tournament.
While PGT has been known to take some chances with Mixed Game festivals and other efforts to appeal specifically to the high-roller community, they don’t take big swings without considerable preparation. When the idea for the first PGT PLO festival came together, there was a confluence of circumstances that hit just right – players in Vegas for March Madness, a strong schedule for the local pros, and the right hole in the schedule to appeal to a hungry group of PLO players on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We know it is a very popular game, especially in Europe,” said Tim Duckworth, Director of Live Events & Content for PokerGO. “Once we did our first one in March 2023, and it had like 200 entrants, we were just like, ‘Oh God, what have we started.’”
The four PGT PLO festivals have drawn comparable numbers to most of its major No Limit Hold’em series, thanks in large part to a significant contingent of players from Finland, a country that boasts one of the deepest pools of PLO players in the world. The all-time top 10 winningest live PLO tournament players according to The Hendon Mob include two Finns – Eelis Parssinen, who is No. 1 on that list, and Joni Jouhkimainen. Both were part of a considerable contingent of players in attendance for this most recent PLO festival
“It’s amazing that these last two years there’s actually been a PLO series,” said Jouhkimainen. “Back in the days these things didn’t exist – it was either a mix or just No Limit. So to have a PLO tour for a PLO player like me and all the other Finns, it’s great, and we are very happy to come a long way here.”
It wasn’t all that long ago that options were severely limited for Pot Limit Omaha specialists and enthusiasts alike. There were three or four PLO tournaments a year at the WSOP, which was the best-case scenario compared to one-off events in the middle of Hold ’em-focused festivals. But something was unlocked with the advent of PLO high rollers, and whether it was a matter of catering to the right audience or fortunate timing things the PLO ecosystem has been thriving ever since.
Multiple millionaires are crowned in PLO tournaments every year, with the WSOP escalating all the way up to an annual $50,000 High Roller over the last four years. The WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas included a $10,500 Pot Limit Omaha event on the schedule in 2023 that drew 123 entries, and Triton Poker Super High Roller Series has fully embraced Pot Limit Omaha as a consistent portion of its schedule in recent years as well.
Since 2023, five prizes of over $2 million have been awarded in Pot Limit Omaha tournaments – the largest of which, $2,303,017, was won by one of poker’s true breakout superstars of the last few years, Jesse Lonis. Back in May, at Triton’s event in Montenegro, they ran just the second $100K-plus PLO event ever contested.
Christopher Frank won just over $2 million after making a heads-up deal with Dylan Weisman; Weisman earned a career-best $1,666,090.
That result helped thrust Weisman all the way up to No. 2 on the all-time PLO money list. He’s also a two-time WSOP bracelet winner, with both of those victories coming in Pot Limit Omaha tournaments.
Weisman won Event 2 of this PGT PLO Series on Oct. 16, and his spirits were high even in the moments after busting out of another one of the tournaments going on at the PokerGO Studio. He’s quite bullish on the future of Pot Limit Omaha and its growth potential in the years to come.
“A lot of large cash games are PLO now and not Hold’em,” said Weisman. “And so the recreational pool at the higher stakes is already used to four cards. I honestly just see it continuing to grow, especially the WSOP – every year it gets bigger and bigger. It’ll probably hit an equilibrium in the same way that it did Hold’em, but the popularity of the game is still growing. It’s cool that more venues are capitalizing on that, especially for those of us that love four card, because we get to play it more.”
There’s a lot of energy and excitement surrounding the game of Pot Limit Omaha. The aura and the energy in the PokerGO Studio was measurably different than what is typical, whether that be because of the excitement and variance involved in the game itself or the players who choose to embrace it. You don’t typically see players in a $10,000 field play the standup game, a staple of livestreamed cash games, and yet on this particular afternoon in Las Vegas there was banter and joy in excess.
“It’s very funny seeing the different environments that show up in the studio, because I play all of them – the Hold’ems, the mixed games,” Weisman said. “You have a lot of people who are friendly, but it’s a little less lax. For the PLO, it feels like a home game. We were doing straddles, which is not optimal to do in a tournament like this. But the fact that you get to hang out with your friends and have it be put together so well – the staff, Paul Campbell, all the dealers and floors – when you have a safe environment like this for people to come play high stakes, it’s it allows people to just have fun.”
It’s hard to say just how far this PLO surge can go, but there are signs that the appetite is growing at lower buy-in levels, too. The record for the largest live PLO field in history was broken at the 2024 WSOP, with 4,280 players registering for a $1,000 Mystery Bounty PLO tournament.
There are already entities trying to tap into that lower buy-in market as well. PGT is running an event in Houston with a $1 million guaranteed multi-flight PLO main event in late November, and a new series under the Diamond Poker Series banner is running a festival in Albania the first week of November with €3 million in total guarantees.
Pot Limit Omaha is a game that seems to be a contradiction, in rewarding gamblers and strong players in equal measure. From the first time PLO hit the ESPN airwaves from the 2004 WSOP, there was something in the chaos and excitement of Ted Lawson and Lee Watkinson that just hit a little bit different than No Limit Hold’em. You can be a fan of the biggest gamblers and the most strategically sound analysts, and there’s plenty of room under the tent for everyone.
And as Pot Limit Omaha continues to evolve, just like the game itself, the combination of potential runouts are endless.