The Most Overplayed Hands in PLO
One test sorts every overplayed hand category in PLO: how strong will this hand be on the river, when the stacks actually go in? Equities run close in this game, so "probably best right now" is nearly worthless as a reason to build a pot. Nut potential and redraws are what carry a hand through three streets, and the classic overplays all fail exactly that test.
Two pair without backup fails it first. Top two with no redraw is a mediocre stack-off on most dynamic boards; bottom two and top-and-bottom are genuinely bad ones, and they play far better as pot-controlled bluff-catchers than as the engine of a big pot. Non-nut draws fail it next, and this is the signature Hold'em import error: pair plus flush draw is a monster in Hold'em, but PLO ranges are stuffed with nut and second-nut suited combinations, so a ten-high flush draw is dominated as a draw and dominated again as a made hand. Straight draws to the third nuts carry the same disease; eight outs where half make the third-best straight are worth far less than eight outs sounds. Dry overpairs round out the made-hand traps. Having 3-bet does not obligate a naked A-A-x-x to barrel a J-9-4 board with no suit and no wrap; an overpair with no route to a big hand has no business forcing money in.
Weak trips deserve their own paragraph, because the mistake hides in combinatorics. Flopping a set is hard in PLO; flopping trips on a paired board is not, and players consistently underestimate how often opponents have done it. On a K-8-8 flop three-way, holding trips with a weak kicker yourself, each opponent has trips roughly 8-9% of the time with one eight accounted for, plus a couple percent of K-K for top boat. Call it about 25% that you are already beaten before a single chip goes in, and that number only climbs as bets fold out the hands you beat. Trips is a fine hand that becomes a bad stack-off the moment real money starts moving.
None of this says fold these hands. It says stop promoting them from "worth a flop" to "worth a stack" on looks. Project the hand to the river: if the honest answer is that it will spend the big streets uncomfortable, keep the pot small and let it win the pots it actually wins. The starting hand rankings make the same point preflop, ranking hands by how they perform when money goes in rather than by raw prettiness, and the hand distribution page will show you, for any board, exactly how much of a range has your weak trips beaten.