People ask me what book I'd recommend to a novice Omaha player. There are other useful
books, but my normal ❤️ reply is: the Bible. Omaha has the tendency to drive beginning
players to prayer, but it really shouldn't.
I am also ❤️ often asked about writing my own
book on Omaha. This is not a book. It is not meant to deal ❤️ with all the advanced and
difficult skills that the strongest Omaha players master. This is an introduction to
the key ❤️ strategies behind the game. While it's not meant to deal with the most complex
concepts, it does deal with concepts ❤️ that should benefit many experienced players too,
not just novices.
What I mean by "Omaha" here is: Limit Omaha High-Low (aka ❤️ Omaha8,
Omaha Hi-Lo Split, Omaha Eight-or-Better). Omaha is also played Limit High Only, Pot
Limit High, Pot Limit High-Low and ❤️ occasionally No Limit. While concepts here are
sometimes applicable to the other variations, sometimes they definitely are not. Check
out ❤️ the several other articles linked on the Omaha Poker Tips page for strategy ideas
on the other variations. Also check ❤️ out Omaha Myths, which deals with common
misconceptions about the game, and The Secret of Omaha, for a starting hand ❤️ approach to
the game.
In general, in all forms of Omaha, players who treat the game as a party are
dominated ❤️ by players who treat the game as business. Optimists enjoy Omaha; realists
dominate Omaha. Players exercising mathematical realism, discipline, adaptability ❤️ and
creativity get the money from players out to have fun and gamble to get lucky.
Two
cards, always two cards ❤️ ... Omaha hands consist of three of the five community board
cards, plus two cards from each player's hand -- ❤️ always three off the board, always two
out of the hand. You can use the same or different card combinations ❤️ to make your high
hand and your low hand (if any), but you always use two from your hand, three ❤️ from the
board. This is important not just from the perspective that it is a rule and you have
to ❤️ do it, but also in thinking about how your hand must integrate with the board. Your
hand must cooperate with ❤️ the board. (Cooperation is a recurrent Omaha principle.) You
should never think of your hand in isolation. It needs three ❤️ cards from the board for
high, and needs three cards for low. (Some new players find it helpful to focus ❤️ more on
"three from the board" rather than "two from the hand.")
Nut low means best possible
low ... Reading low ❤️ hands often confuses newbie players -- experienced ones too -- but
there is an easy way to do it. First, ❤️ you must remember the two cards from your hand,
three from the board rule. A board like 87532 might make ❤️ 2367 somewhat hard to read but
you read your low hand simply by taking the lowest card combination to be ❤️ found using
three cards from the board and two from your hand.
But what is the lowest? What about
when your ❤️ cards are paired (counterfeited) on the board? Think of it this way: the
lowest/best possible hand is a wheel, a ❤️ 54321 -- or 54,321. The highest/worst possible
qualifying low hand is 87654 -- or 87,654. Read your low hand as ❤️ a number, starting
with the highest card and working down. The player with the hand/number closest to
54,321 wins (or ❤️ ties if someone else has the same hand/number). Omaha players often
speak of "the nut low." This is the best ❤️ possible low in this particular hand. While A2
combined with an 876KQ board creates the best low possible, 54 combined ❤️ with a board of
A23KQ makes the nut low in another case. And, 23 combined with a 764KA board makes ❤️ the
nut low (64,321), not an A2, which only can make a 76,421. If you get confused by how
your ❤️ cards are paired or counterfeited by the board, at the showdown, show your hand
and ask the dealer to read ❤️ exactly what your low hand is.
Omaha is a game of nut hands,
so as hands unfold, practice reading what the ❤️ nut low hand is. Then start thinking of
your low hand in relation to the nut low. It's not important ❤️ to know how low your low
is, what matters is how low your low is in comparison to the nut ❤️ low.
Why play Omaha?
... While some newbies reading this Introduction will be hard pressed to do it right
away, the ❤️ aim is to win at Omaha -- not have fun, or even to irritate yourself.
Frankly, at lower limits, winning ❤️ at Omaha is easy , if you really are trying to win
because most Omaha players play terribly, much worse ❤️ than they play Hold'em (which is
not so good to start with).
In many ways, lower limit Omaha is mathematically simple.
❤️ If you play only good starting hands and your opponents see fit to play almost every
hand, and don't care ❤️ whether they play for one bet or four, soon the math of that will
work in your favor. Omaha is ❤️ a great game to make money if you have a small
bankroll.R$3/6 Omaha should require less of a bankroll for ❤️ a sensible player thanR$3/6
Limit Hold'em, but generate a higher hourly win rate.
Bad players have virtually no
chance to beat ❤️ Omaha over any meaningful period of time, but they can win big pots, and
have really good sessions. This is ❤️ true of Hold'em too but to a much smaller degree,
because Hold'em edges are generally small in loose games. Weak ❤️ Hold'em players can
"school" together and get pot odds on their poor draws and therefore not be playing all
that ❤️ bad. On the other hand, there is no parallel schooling phenomenon in Omaha where
very often five players draw stone ❤️ cold dead while two players have all the outs
between them (for example, on the turn the nut flush and ❤️ the top set are the only live
hands, and five other players with two pairs and baby flushes are drawing ❤️ dead).
Loose
game Limit Omaha is a game of massive edges; loose game Limit Hold'em is a game of
smallish edges. ❤️ Low limit Omaha games are the easiest poker games to beat -- if you
play properly. Most players do not ❤️ have the ability, or more important, the desire to
play properly in low limit Omaha games. If you are playing ❤️ to win, generally Omaha
games are the place to play because they are cheaper (less bankroll), more profitable
(higher hourly ❤️ win rates) and have weaker players playing much more poorly. It's deadly
dull tho. What winning loose-game Omaha is not ❤️ is a barrel of laughs.
So, for less
experienced players, there are some contradictions at work here. Omaha is a great ❤️ game
for good players... but most inexperienced players are not good... but it is very easy
to teach a player ❤️ to play way-above-average Omaha... but the basic advice is to play
with great discipline... but having discipline is an advanced ❤️ skill... and is boring as
paste.
Omaha is a game of non-random accuracy ... One thing to understand about Omaha
is ❤️ that since you get a higher percentage of your final hand sooner, your hands are
generally much more defined than ❤️ in Hold'em or Stud. After all, 7/9ths of your hand is
known on the flop. Then, when it comes to ❤️ the betting, the outcome of an Omaha hand is
often precisely known. A player that can count twenty, or ten, ❤️ or four outs to the nut
hand often has exactly that many outs to win.
In Hold'em random outcomes are common.
❤️ Facing several opponents, they can win by hitting oddball kickers or spiking an
underpair. On the other hand, Omaha is ❤️ far more concrete. You know often your precise
outs -- how many cards make you the nut hand. In loose ❤️ games there is very little
mystery. In tighter games you often don't need to make nut hands to win, since ❤️ you face
fewer opponents, but in lower limit situations, there is usually little randomness to
the game. Unlike Hold'em, before ❤️ the river card is dealt, usually you should know
exactly how many possible cards make you the winner, and how ❤️ many don't.
Omaha is a
game of information. Hold'em is a game of uncertainty. That's how they were designed!
Loose game ❤️ Omaha is about ending up with the nuts. Loose game Hold'em is far more
shadowy and difficult.
Many players seem to ❤️ draw the wrong conclusions from the greater
certainty that is part of Omaha. They think because their nut flush on ❤️ the turn gets
beaten on the river when the board pairs that Omaha has some mystical randomness to it.
The ❤️ opposite is true. There are a precise number of cards that pair the board, and make
you lose. There are ❤️ a precise number that do not pair the board, and make you win. On
the turn, if you have the ❤️ nut flush, with no cards in your hand paired on the board,
and your opponent has a set, with no ❤️ other cards paired on the board, there are exactly
forty possible river cards. Exactly ten pair the board to make ❤️ you a loser. Exactly
thirty do not pair the board and make you the winner. That's it -- pure, basic ❤️ math. In
the long run, you win three out of four. This is known. This is Omaha.
Do not let
yourself ❤️ be confused by irrelevant concepts. What matters in any form of poker, but
particularly in Omaha, is the probability of ❤️ winning -- not who is temporarily in the
lead. Whether you flop a made hand or a draw or a ❤️ backdoor draw is irrelevant, what
matters are your prospects, your probabilities, of having the winning hand on the
river. What ❤️ counts is how many cards, in what combinations, make you the winning hand.
Know how many cards make your hand, ❤️ and then know that in the long run you will win
pots in the mathematically appropriate percentage: if you have ❤️ x% chance of making the
winning hand, you better be getting at least the correspondingly appropriate pot
odds.
Omaha is a ❤️ game of accuracy, clarity and concrete information. Sure, sometimes
you get unlucky, and since Omaha edges are so huge, when ❤️ you get unlucky it can be hard
to swallow, but since the edges are usually so big, if you play ❤️ good starting hands in
Omaha, and get unlucky, you can still win. You just have to keep your
discipline.
Starting hands... ❤️ Unlike Limit Hold'em, where post-flop play is far more
critical, winning Limit Omaha High-Low is fundamentally rooted in starting hands.
❤️ Starting hands exist before the flop, which is where you get enormous edges in Omaha
against a field. On the ❤️ turn you will often have times where some players are even
drawing dead, and that is clearly the juiciest money ❤️ in the game, but the simplest,
most direct, most necessary way to beat these games is to not play crap ❤️ hands and to
get more money in the pot when you have A255 and several of your opponents have hands
❤️ like K965. Getting garbage hands with a low winning expectation to pay as much as you
can before the flop ❤️ when they are large dogs is a big part of winning Omaha.
Not
counting AA and perhaps KK, in looser, multiway ❤️ games, Limit Texas Hold'em hands run
much closer in actual value (that is, value that comes from betting/calling/playing
hands to ❤️ their conclusion) than Limit Omaha High-Low hands do -- regardless of what
urban myths claim. If you don't know and ❤️ appreciate this basic concept, you are going
to be in trouble in Omaha. In multiway pots, Omaha has a fairly ❤️ large group of hands
that will win at double the rate of randomish hands. Few Hold'em hands can say the
❤️ same. Only playing good starting hands (the vast majority being "five card hands",
raising before the flop with most of ❤️ them) is the basic path to of winning.
Schooling
in Omaha ... "Schooling" is a common phenomenon in loose-game Hold'em. When ❤️ several
players play badly by calling with weak draws, like gutshot straights or backdoor
flushes, these players partially protect each ❤️ other by making the "price" on each of
their calls better. If only one player calls with a gutshot draw, ❤️ usually that is a
significant mistake, but if several players make similar calls, now the pot is big
enough to ❤️ make the calls profitable, or at least less bad. Properly understanding the
strategy involved in schooling is a key skill ❤️ in loose-game Hold'em. (See Hold'em
schooling.)
There is no parallel schooling phenomenon in Omaha -- quite the contrary.
In Omaha, schooling ❤️ benefits the favorites, not the underdogs. This reverse schooling
phenomenon is what makes Omaha often mindlessly profitable. Players with four ❤️ outs or
less call bets from players with twenty outs, and no matter how many people call, the
twenty outs ❤️ player continues to have twenty outs. Despite the definite reverse
profitability of "schooling" in Omaha, poor players engage in it ❤️ all the time. They
look at a big pot and call bets hoping to get lucky, even though they may ❤️ be drawing
totally dead.
Suppose you flop a top set of three kings against seven opponents. The
true enemies of your ❤️ KKK (or any strong Omaha hand) are the first two callers (meaning
the two opponents with the most outs). On ❤️ a flop of KsQd7c for example, we are afraid
of AJTx wrap-straight draws. That's the first caller or two. Then ❤️ we have open-end
straight draws. We are the favorite over those (and all the rest of the draws). Next
are ❤️ backdoor flush draws. Then we worry about the lame backdoor straight draws around
the seven. Naturally, many of these longshot ❤️ draws overlap each other. For instance, if
the Ace-high spade flush draw calls us, we certainly love the five-high spade ❤️ flush
draw to call, drawing dead. Yes, they may win sometimes, but we love these sixth,
seventh, and eighth callers!
With ❤️ the KKK, if we assume we won't win unless we fill up,
and we don't fill up on the turn, ❤️ we will have ten outs of the forty-four possible
cards, meaning we will fill up 23% of the time. Even ❤️ if we lose to quads the 3% part of
that, that's still a one out of five win percentage, for ❤️ a scoop, while getting six,
seven or eight way action. Additionally, we'll normally have our own backdoor draws. If
we ❤️ have two backdoor King-high flush draws, this will further destroy what little power
the sixth, seventh and eight callers have, ❤️ as their backdoor baby flush draws in our
suits are contributing totally dead money on that aspect of their hands.
So, ❤️ building a
pot with a raise before the flop in Omaha does not benefit schooling opponents, it
benefits players with ❤️ good hands that are more likely to make nut values. The flip side
of this phenomenon exposes another key difference ❤️ between Omaha and Hold'em.
In loose
Hold'em games, there are a lot of hands you can profitably add to your arsenal, ❤️ most
obviously Ace-rag suited and suited connectors. This is not true in Omaha. Again, the
difference in value of hands ❤️ multiway in Omaha is much more dramatic than in Hold'em.
The majority of hands simply are never playable (outside the ❤️ blinds). If you are on the
button and everybody limps in, 3456 is still a worthless piece of garbage. It ❤️ does not
matter if you have three opponents or seven, the hand stinks. You can play a small
number of ❤️ additional hands, but for the most part, no matter how loose your opponents
are, you can't add many more hands ❤️ to your playable repertoire.
The thing to "loosen
up" in such a game is to want to play for a raise ❤️ most every hand you play. In tight
games, calling when someone limps in front of you is sometimes the right ❤️ play. In a
loose game, raising is usually the correct play because you are playing a hand with way
the ❤️ best of it. You want dead money in the pot, and you want dead hands hopelessly
chasing it! And they ❤️ will.
If you build it, they will come... drawing dead.
A "river"
game? ... Some people call Omaha a "river game" because ❤️ the last card often determines
the winning hand. While that is true, the thinking behind this "river game" idea is
❤️ very flawed. Poor Omaha players wait to the river to bet -- when they know they are
going to win ❤️ (or lose). That's just not sensible or profitable. Omaha is not a "river
game"; it is a game of preparation.
Before ❤️ the flop: you should play hands that have a
high expectation; you should manipulate the pot size; you should try ❤️ to manipulate your
opponents so that when you have a hand that plays well against fewer opponents you are
playing ❤️ against fewer opponents and when you have a hand that plays well against a full
field you are playing against ❤️ a full field.
After the flop: the flop is critical. Here
you should roughly calculate your various probabilities and deduce how ❤️ favorable your
chances are to win. Again, here a player should be manipulating the pot -- get more
chips in ❤️ when the odds favor you, try to minimize when you have a longer shot.
The turn
card is the least important ❤️ aspect of Omaha but it's the end of the main math part of
the game. In loose games, you can ❤️ pretty much calculate precisely your chances of
winning some or all of the pot.
Whether a player then makes or doesn't ❤️ make their hand
on the river really doesn't matter. You do everything right mathematically up to this
point, and lose ❤️ to a one outer, that is fine -- just do the same things again and again
the next times. Omaha ❤️ (and all the other games) is about having the best of it in the
longrun. There is no "leader money" ❤️ in poker. The "best" hand is the one with the
highest winning potential (including the understanding that some hands will ❤️ win more
bets than others). Don't think what just happened was an aspect of a "river game". I
can't emphasize ❤️ this strongly enough: All the truly important actions in this hand
occurred before that river card happened to bring you ❤️ bad luck.
Another thing to
consider is that only a tiny percentage of money action is on the river in Omaha. ❤️ Poker
is about money. Omaha is not about the river. That's naive. Omaha is about getting
money in the pot ❤️ in a mathematically advantageous way before the river. Limit Omaha
High Low is an anti-river game!
Put another way, if you ❤️ play a coin flip game against a
guy, and he says he'll give youR$5 for every time it comes up ❤️ heads, but you have to
give himR$1 for every time it comes up tails, it would be wrong to refer ❤️ to this
situation as "a flip game"! The key part of the game was in the pre-negotiation, not in
the ❤️ flip itself.
Driving the pot ... Loose game Omaha is mostly about nut hands. If
there is a flush, you sure ❤️ want the nut flush. If there is a low, you sure want the nut
low. The obvious reason, of course, ❤️ is because you have the winning hand rather than
the second or third best hand. But that's not the only ❤️ value to playing nut
hands.
Again, winning Omaha requires pot manipulation -- get more money in when you
have clearly the ❤️ best of it; play for cheap when you don't. Nut hands and nut draws
using quality cards can "drive the ❤️ betting" where non-nut hands cannot.
For instance,
let's look at the enormous difference between KK and JJ -- not in terms ❤️ of how much
more often KK makes the winning hand, but in terms of the difference in the pot sizes.
❤️ KK is a much more valuable holding in part because KK can drive the betting in many
pots that JJ ❤️ can't -- like on a turn board of KQQ7 versus a board of JQQ7. The
difference between those two situations ❤️ is enormous. There are other reasons why KK is
a major holding while JJ is a minor one, but the ❤️ difference in how each can drive the
betting (or not) offers an excellent illustration of what situations you want to ❤️ be in
when playing Omaha.
Likewise, there is a very large difference between A23x and A2xx on
a 87K flop. The ❤️ latter hand should win less money, not just because it will be
counterfeited sometimes and not make the winning hand, ❤️ but because it cannot drive the
betting nearly as much (if at all) as the A23x can. A256, A247, A269, ❤️ all these hands
should win extra money not just because you make winners more often, but because you
should be ❤️ driving the betting with them far stronger than with the one-dimensional
A2.
Cooperation ... Greedy players make lousy Omaha players. Foolish ❤️ greed often costs
players bets because they simply don't recognize that the game frequently requires
cooperative betting.
Suppose there are three ❤️ people in a pot. On an 8♠7♠5♣ flop, Player
A bets and is called. The 9♡ comes on the turn. ❤️ Player A bets again, Player B calls,
Player C raises, Player A reraises, B calls, C caps, A and B ❤️ call. Now the river card
pairs the board with a flush card, the 9♠. What now? Often Player A will ❤️ bet, with no
high hand, and Player B will raise, with no low hand. This will drive Player C with ❤️ a
straight and a weak low out of the pot. Translation: stupid Player A and Player
B.
Instead of cooperating to ❤️ get at least one bet from Player C, they got none. If
Player A stupidly bets, Player B should call, ❤️ and hope to get one bet from Player C, or
perhaps an idiotic raise. The better play though would be ❤️ for Player A to check, have
Player B bet, get Player C to call, then Player A checkraise, and have ❤️ Player B now
call. This way you get at least one bet from Player C, maybe two. Think about how ❤️ you
can use cooperative betting between high and low hands to extract bets from players in
the middle. Don't be ❤️ greedy and cost yourself money.
Luck ... While the emphasis on the
non-random mathematical nature of the game above makes the ❤️ point, I'll mention a few
things about luck as it applies to Omaha. All poker has luck involved. Omaha is ❤️ the
most mathematically straightforward poker game -- very little randomness, very much
known information. So, when someone makes a miracle ❤️ one-outer on the river, some people
will mistakenly think of Omaha as having a high degree of luck, when the ❤️ opposite is
plainly true.
Omaha is a bit like a roulette wheel. If you have bets on all the numbers
except ❤️ one, when it happens to come up that other number that is really bad luck. But,
now suppose the person ❤️ who bet on that one number also put up as much money as you did.
You had thirty-six chances to ❤️ win, he had one, playing for the same prize. The longrun
outcome of this game is surely not going to ❤️ be determined by luck! You will crush your
opponent, either very soon, or a little while later. When he gets ❤️ lucky, he gets
super-lucky, but that's just fine, as long as he is willing to keep making the same bet
❤️ over and over.
Hold'em has far more random luck than Omaha (or Stud). That's why it's
the most popular game. Poor ❤️ players can do better, longer. Winning Hold'em is a game of
exploiting tiny edges often. Winning Omaha is a game ❤️ of exploiting huge edges less
often.
In most ways, Omaha is a far simpler game. When played by good players, Omaha
❤️ games are horrible -- unless the blinds are huge, forcing players to gamble. This is
why Omaha is often played ❤️ with a kill, to generate action in a game that should have
very little.
This is also why Omaha will never ❤️ be "the game of the future." Poor
players have no chance. Good players eat them alive. In many localities, Omaha ❤️ games
burn brightly for a while, and then burn out as the bad players go back to Hold'em
games where ❤️ random luck gives them a fighting chance.
Quartered ... In loose games you
should hardly ever think about being quartered (when ❤️ you have the same low hand as
another player). It's almost never very costly to be quartered in limit Omaha. ❤️ In loose
games, one of the principal plays you should always have on your mind is how you can
get ❤️ three-quarters of a pot with hands like nut low and one pair. Too many weaker
players obsessively fixate on being ❤️ quartered with this sort of hand instead of
focusing on getting three-quarters of the pot occasionally. The quickest way to ❤️ get
over a pathological fear of being quartered is to just do the math on various
situations where you get ❤️ one-quarter. It's hardly ever much of a loss. Now compare that
to similar hands where you manage to get three-quarters ❤️ of different size pots. You'll
quickly see that many tiny losses getting quartered are more than compensated for by a
❤️ few occasions where you can snatch three-quarters.
Scooping ... High-Low Split poker is
about scooping the pot -- winning it all, ❤️ not splitting. Many weak and beginning
players think they are playing decently because they focus on hands with A2 or ❤️ A3 that
make the nut low. These hands are playable obviously, and getting half a loaf is better
than none, ❤️ but this is most definitely not why you should be showing up to play Omaha
(or Stud HiLo for that ❤️ matter).
Once again, just doing some simple math is very
illuminating. Scooping a pot is not merely twice as good as ❤️ splitting. Suppose you play
a five-way pot. Everyone puts inR$80. If you split theR$400 pot, you get backR$200, a
profit ❤️ ofR$120. But if you scoop, you getR$400, for a profit ofR$320. That's not twice
as good, it is 2.67 times ❤️ as good. In a three-way pot where you all investR$80, if you
split you getR$120 for a profit ofR$40. If ❤️ you scoop, you getR$240 for a profit ofR$160
-- four times as good as splitting.
The real reason to play A2 ❤️ hands is not for the
benefit of making the nut low and splitting a pot. The reason to play this ❤️ hand is
because while it is splitting the pot some of the time, it allows other parts of your
hand ❤️ to be aiming to scoop the pot. When you play A2, you actually want to be using
some other aspect ❤️ of your hand, something that will scoop. A2 just makes it safe for
you to play, including often giving you ❤️ the chance to make backdoor straights and
flushes that you otherwise would not have stayed in the pot to make. ❤️ This again goes
back to "driving the pot". A2 allows you to drive the pot in situations like where you
❤️ have A2JT with the nut flush draw and the board is 4678. Your A2 allows you to stick
around for ❤️ the gutshot straight draw, and allows you to aggressively bet your nut flush
draw. That is where the money is, ❤️ not in splitting the pot with the nut low.
Hands as
units ... The above illustration also should help make the ❤️ point that Omaha hands are
complete units. Despite the "must play two" aspect of the game, Omaha hands should not
❤️ be looked at as six two-card holdings. Doing so is to fundamentally misunderstand the
game.
It should be easy enough to ❤️ see though that while 3d3h is a basically useless
Omaha holding on its own, when combined with an As2s it ❤️ now becomes a powerful aspect
of a coordinated hand! Viewing the 33 out of the context of the A2 is ❤️ a serious
error.
Beyond the simplistic thinking about starting hands, it is critical to think of
Omaha hands as complete units ❤️ after the flop. You may play A♠2♠3♡Q♡, but end up with a
flop of Q♠9♣2♣. Before the flop no point-count ❤️ system would assign the Q♡2♠ aspect of
your hand any value, but now here on the flop it is part ❤️ of your whole hand, and you
must think in terms of how you have two pair, a backdoor flush draw, ❤️ a back door nut
low draw, a backdoor wheel draw, etc. Omaha hands are multifaceted and
multi-dimensional. They should be ❤️ viewed and analyzed as integrated wholes, not
separate parts. An Omaha hand can be greater than the sum of its ❤️ parts, sometimes even
less, but Omaha hands are always units of all your cards.
Situational analysis &
starting hands ... All ❤️ winning poker requires situational judgments. Some folks just
hate that. They want easy, cookie-cutter answers. Sometimes difficult problems do have
❤️ easy answers, but more often they don't. Hold'em is a more situational game than Omaha,
but because of that, when ❤️ situational judgments are needed in Omaha, they are usually
very critical -- inspirational even. For example, bluffing is not something ❤️ you should
do much of in loose game Omaha, but there still is a lot of profit to be made ❤️ from
bluffing, precisely because nobody thinks it is a big part of the game!
Most players
play a lot of hands ❤️ in Omaha, more hands than they play in Hold'em. Generally, the
proper play is the reverse. However many hands you ❤️ play in Hold'em, you should play
less in Omaha. (Again, Hold'em is a post-flop game where playing junk before the ❤️ flop
can often be situationally correct.) If you are in an Omaha game with people violating
this concept, as most ❤️ Omaha players do, then you should only be focusing on playing
strong hands and, in the correct situations, a few ❤️ highly speculative hands that make
for big scoops. The latter group boils down to KKxx, and QQ with two decent ❤️ other
cards. All other hands should contain an ace or be highly coordinated (KQJT, QJJT,
2345). The weakest of these ❤️ are also more speculative (like the three examples). They
aren't very good, and don't hit that often, so you want ❤️ to try and play for only one
bet, but when they do hit, they pay off nicely, so in weak, ❤️ loose games they should be
played. In tougher games, all these speculative hands without an ace should normally be
mucked ❤️ without a second thought.
A very good (but not spectacular) hand like AK32 with
a suit on the King will scoop ❤️ somewhere between 20 and 50% more than a random hand,
depending on number of players and positional factors (and will ❤️ split far more than
random hands). If you are on the button and don't raise with this hand when everybody
❤️ limps in, you are playing lousy poker. On the other hand, in nine-handed games you
often won't want to raise ❤️ under the gun with low-only hands like A234 because you want
many players. You want to play your very good ❤️ hands for a raise, you want to try to put
in an extra bet when you can, but sometimes you ❤️ can't... and you have to go to plan
B.
The general starting point for full-table, loose-ish ring games is: always have ❤️ an
Ace. The doesn't mean play every Ace hand. A999 is not playable just because you have
an Ace. What ❤️ it means is: you should be playing very, very few hands without an Ace.
A
few high hands, like KK with ❤️ two decent cards, and four Broadway cards (double-suited
ideally) are ace-less, speculative, limp-if-you-can hands that can be played against
multiple ❤️ opponents.
And then there is this: no hand loses more in Omaha High-Low than
23xx. Maybe you will find limp situations ❤️ on the button or small blind to very rarely
speculate with 23xx, but overall "2-3 players" are a major source ❤️ of a winning players
income.
One final point. If your hand does not have an Ace, and it doesn't have a ❤️ king
or deuce in it... the universe of hands that you should be playing ever is miniscule,
limited to highly ❤️ situational hands like Q♠Q♣4♠3♣ and Q♠Q♣J♣T♠.
The end of the
beginning ... Advanced Omaha strategy goes quite a bit beyond the ❤️ above, but most Omaha
players go nowhere near as far as we go here. Once you think correctly about your
❤️ approach to the game, like correctly viewing how much better scooping is than splitting
for instance, advanced strategy concepts become ❤️ more readily apparent, and your play
will evolve and adapt.
One reason good players beat bad players at Omaha is because
❤️ good players are thinking about the right game. Don't be concerned about losing pots.
That's defeatist tunnel vision. Instead, be ❤️ concerned with getting your money in with
the best of it time and time and time again, and then letting ❤️ the math take care of
things in the longrun. That is Omaha. The introduction to it anyway...
