Take one PLO6 (six-card Pot-Limit Omaha) hand, keep the six ranks — A Q 10 9 6 4 — and change only the suits. Triple-suited, it ranks Top 7.2%. With all six cards in one suit, it ranks Top 65.2%. More cards of one suit does not make the hand stronger; spreading them does.
Key numbers
- Same ranks A Q 10 9 6 4, triple-suited, (AQ)(T9)(64): Top 7.2% of PLO6 hand classes.
- Double-suited, (AQ)(T9)64: Top 11.7%.
- Four cards in one suit, (AQT9)64: Top 44.0%. All six in one suit: Top 65.2%.
- Suit shape alone moves this hand about 58 percentile points.
- The ranking covers every one of the 962,988 PLO6 hand classes, suits and all.
One hand, six suit patterns
Every row below holds the same six ranks. Only the way the suits are distributed changes, from most spread (three suited pairs) to most concentrated (one suit). The pattern column counts the cards of each suit: 2-2-2 is triple-suited, 6 is all one suit. Each hand’s percentile is its rank among the 962,988 hand classes of PLO6.
| Suits | Pattern | Cards | Class | PLO6 ranking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triple-suited | 2-2-2 | A♥ Q♥ 10♠ 9♠ 6♣ 4♣ | (AQ)(T9)(64) | Top 7.2% |
| Double-suited | 2-2-1-1 | A♥ Q♥ 10♠ 9♠ 6♣ 4♦ | (AQ)(T9)64 | Top 11.7% |
| 3 in one suit | 3-3 | A♥ Q♥ 10♥ 9♠ 6♠ 4♠ | (AQT)(964) | Top 22.9% |
| 4 in one suit | 4-1-1 | A♥ Q♥ 10♥ 9♥ 6♠ 4♣ | (AQT9)64 | Top 44.0% |
| 5 in one suit | 5-1 | A♥ Q♥ 10♥ 9♥ 6♥ 4♠ | (AQT96)4 | Top 52.0% |
| All 6 one suit | 6 | A♥ Q♥ 10♥ 9♥ 6♥ 4♥ | (AQT964) | Top 65.2% |
Most players read “more suited” as “better”. Along this ladder, the hand gets weaker at every step as the suits pile up.
Spread your suits
In Omaha you play exactly two cards from your hand, so a flush needs two cards of one suit in your hand — and no more than two of them can ever play. With the suits spread across two or three suited pairs, the hand can make the nuts more ways, and it does not block its own flushes. Triple-suited and double-suited both land in the top 12%.
Pile them up, and…
| Suits | Pattern | Class | PLO6 ranking |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 in one suit | 3-3 | (AQT)(964) | Top 22.9% |
| 4 in one suit | 4-1-1 | (AQT9)64 | Top 44.0% |
| 5 in one suit | 5-1 | (AQT96)4 | Top 52.0% |
| All 6 one suit | 6 | (AQT964) | Top 65.2% |
From three cards in a suit to four — (AQT)(964) to (AQT9)64 — the hand drops about 21 percentile points: Top 22.9% to Top 44.0%. Extra cards of the same suit are dead weight. Only two of them can play, and every one held in your hand is one fewer of that suit left to come on the board.
An honest note on that step: in this ladder, going from (AQT)(964) to (AQT9)64 also breaks up the second three-card suit, so the ~21 points measure the whole change of suit pattern (3-3 to 4-1-1), not the fourth card on its own.
What it means at the table
In PLO6, “suited” is not the goal — distributed is. Two or three suits rank high; four or more in one suit rank far lower. The same six ranks swing about 58 percentile points on suit shape alone.
How these numbers were produced
- Ranking: PLO6 playability ranking, 6-max, computed by our engine over all 962,988 hand classes — see how we built it.
- Simulated: the order of the ranking (rank and percentile). The top 30% of the ranking was refined with more simulations than the rest; the hands on this page with four or more cards in one suit sit below that line, where the estimates are less precise. Read their percentiles as approximate, not to the decimal.
- Exact: the number of hand classes.
- Classes, not hands: a percentile counts hand classes, and every class counts once, however many concrete hands it stands for.
- One hand: these numbers are for the ranks A Q 10 9 6 4 only; they are one worked example, not a table for every hand.