Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo
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Basic Preflop Play in Pot Limit Omaha. Winning Preflop in Omaha Hi-Lo. Profile of a Typical Omaha Hi-Lo Fish. The Basic Floats in PLO. 6 Reasons to Start Playing Omaha Hi Lo Let’s Play Poker! Omaha Hi Lo allows you to play for both the hi and low pot and because of this the starting hand requirements in Omaha 8 vary significantly from Omaha Hi since the goal is to be able to play for.
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo Tournament Strategy
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo Hand Rankings
*Omaha Hi Low Rules
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi-lo Rules
So you’ve mastered the basics. You understand the nature of the game, starting hand qualities, the importance of position, how high and low possibilities affect your pot odds, why a dry A2 is not the second coming…etc. The $64,000 question is: how far will this take you and how do you improve?
The first answer will depend to a large degree on your game selection. Some $5/$10 games are a lot easier to beat than some $2/$4 games. The basic trait of good omaha games is looseness. (Be sure not to confuse looseness with short-handed aggression!) In general, the loosest games will be the easiest to beat. But with increasing knowledge on how to play the game, the game seems to play tighter. What is your edge beyond basic play? What separates merely “good” players from excellent players and experts? Something clearly makes a difference. Fortunately, most of these “special” qualities can be understood and developed to a high degree. I will address two that often separate men from the boys, so to speak.
The Pivotal Factor
The less leaks you have, the more you will make. In a game where players have roughly equal playing abilities, psychology becomes the pivotal factor. This does not merely apply to “big bet poker” (pot limit and no limit). Sure, it is faster to tilt your bankroll away in a no limit game, but experiences of many testify that it is just as easy in a limit game. Curiously, even very successful high limit players have huge leaks here. Chip Reese, long acknowledged as one of the best all-around players in the world, said in an interview: “I can give you names of guys who are up-and-coming superstars, who are supposed to be great players. I see them when they play in the big games and things go bad; you can’t believe how they play. They break down…” (Gambling Wizards, 62-63). Not that hard to believe, really. Watch some of the “superstars” eliminated early on in the World Series. How many throw a tantrum? How many are prone to negative self-defeating reactions that cripple their game? Most players do not realize that the maxim “we have met the enemy and it is us” amply applies to them. By reacting in destructive and disruptive ways, you are not only damaging the quality of your play, you are making your opponents feel better! Keep saying “I just cannot win in this game” and soon everyone will really believe it, including you. Make an honest assessment of how you fare in this category. You can be your own best friend if you want to. Most people do not and their marginal earning rate reflects that. Plug the biggest common leak and you’ll be more than on the way!
There’s a Pattern to their Madness
If you post one “poker truth” next to your computer to read every day, this is it. Ed Miller said it and he said it well: “every cent of your long-term profit playing poker comes from exploiting your opponents’ errors and predictable tendencies” (Small Stakes Hold’em, 16). The same is equally true of omaha, if not more so. The tendencies of many omaha players can be easily observed, understood, and used against them. Where are the errors? What should you look for? Which area of play should you analyze and dissect?
One of the most rewarding and distinguishing area of study is the “science of raising”. Some players will raise preflop with any dry A2. Others with raise with an A2XX and at least some counterfeit protection. Others will raise only with an A2 that has some counterfeit protection as well as a suited ace. You want to understand the meaning of your opponents’ actions. The raise of a rock is very different from the raise of a maniac. By observing tendencies, you can make some very educated guesses about the possible holdings. You will get better with practice. Some players will become very “obvious” to you with time. I would in fact suggest that once you select your competition and do your “spying”, you should stick to it! Why double your effort and re-do your homework? If you find players whose play is fairly transparent to you, why look for anybody else? If you have a very good idea about what the raises mean on each turn, how your opponent thinks and what he is capable of, your edge increases dramatically.
Some players feel that poker education is improving the quality of play and makes the games less profitable. The truth is, if you know that your opponent is playing a good, basic game, you know more about their play because their actions at the table are meaningful. They have a pattern.
Your Best Friend
No, I am not talking about dogs (although having a pet can really take loads off!). I am referring to Poker Tracker Omaha. Use it. Let it run on your favorite tables and collect all the data. Sit back, relax, or go to sleep. I routinely keep my omaha software on during the night. In the morning, I check on the players I am interested in. Some of their stats are more familiar to me than my own phone number. I know how often and in which situations they raise, how well they understand the quality of their hand, when they tilt and how to spot it, how aggressive they are…etc. You do not need to collect the data via the “caveman” manual method of watching the table. Your computer can do that for you. How easy is that? Put some distance between you and your competition.
How to win at the casino with $20. When You Cannot Beat that @#$ing Limit
One final tip that is extremely useful. Suppose you cannot beat a certain limit. Here’s something that helps. Collect a mass of detailed data on the players who can! You will likely see that they do certain things (“small things”) differently than you. With Poker Tracker Omaha, winning ceased to be a secret. You become successful by studying success! What’s stopping you?
Happy playing!
For questions regarding this article or to leave comments, please visit the ITH Forums.Name: Email: Website: Review Title: Rating: 24Review: Check this box to confirm you are human.Related Articles: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. $3/6 Omaha should require less of a bankroll for a sensible player than $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 h
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Basic Preflop Play in Pot Limit Omaha. Winning Preflop in Omaha Hi-Lo. Profile of a Typical Omaha Hi-Lo Fish. The Basic Floats in PLO. 6 Reasons to Start Playing Omaha Hi Lo Let’s Play Poker! Omaha Hi Lo allows you to play for both the hi and low pot and because of this the starting hand requirements in Omaha 8 vary significantly from Omaha Hi since the goal is to be able to play for.
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo Tournament Strategy
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo Hand Rankings
*Omaha Hi Low Rules
*Pot Limit Omaha Hi-lo Rules
So you’ve mastered the basics. You understand the nature of the game, starting hand qualities, the importance of position, how high and low possibilities affect your pot odds, why a dry A2 is not the second coming…etc. The $64,000 question is: how far will this take you and how do you improve?
The first answer will depend to a large degree on your game selection. Some $5/$10 games are a lot easier to beat than some $2/$4 games. The basic trait of good omaha games is looseness. (Be sure not to confuse looseness with short-handed aggression!) In general, the loosest games will be the easiest to beat. But with increasing knowledge on how to play the game, the game seems to play tighter. What is your edge beyond basic play? What separates merely “good” players from excellent players and experts? Something clearly makes a difference. Fortunately, most of these “special” qualities can be understood and developed to a high degree. I will address two that often separate men from the boys, so to speak.
The Pivotal Factor
The less leaks you have, the more you will make. In a game where players have roughly equal playing abilities, psychology becomes the pivotal factor. This does not merely apply to “big bet poker” (pot limit and no limit). Sure, it is faster to tilt your bankroll away in a no limit game, but experiences of many testify that it is just as easy in a limit game. Curiously, even very successful high limit players have huge leaks here. Chip Reese, long acknowledged as one of the best all-around players in the world, said in an interview: “I can give you names of guys who are up-and-coming superstars, who are supposed to be great players. I see them when they play in the big games and things go bad; you can’t believe how they play. They break down…” (Gambling Wizards, 62-63). Not that hard to believe, really. Watch some of the “superstars” eliminated early on in the World Series. How many throw a tantrum? How many are prone to negative self-defeating reactions that cripple their game? Most players do not realize that the maxim “we have met the enemy and it is us” amply applies to them. By reacting in destructive and disruptive ways, you are not only damaging the quality of your play, you are making your opponents feel better! Keep saying “I just cannot win in this game” and soon everyone will really believe it, including you. Make an honest assessment of how you fare in this category. You can be your own best friend if you want to. Most people do not and their marginal earning rate reflects that. Plug the biggest common leak and you’ll be more than on the way!
There’s a Pattern to their Madness
If you post one “poker truth” next to your computer to read every day, this is it. Ed Miller said it and he said it well: “every cent of your long-term profit playing poker comes from exploiting your opponents’ errors and predictable tendencies” (Small Stakes Hold’em, 16). The same is equally true of omaha, if not more so. The tendencies of many omaha players can be easily observed, understood, and used against them. Where are the errors? What should you look for? Which area of play should you analyze and dissect?
One of the most rewarding and distinguishing area of study is the “science of raising”. Some players will raise preflop with any dry A2. Others with raise with an A2XX and at least some counterfeit protection. Others will raise only with an A2 that has some counterfeit protection as well as a suited ace. You want to understand the meaning of your opponents’ actions. The raise of a rock is very different from the raise of a maniac. By observing tendencies, you can make some very educated guesses about the possible holdings. You will get better with practice. Some players will become very “obvious” to you with time. I would in fact suggest that once you select your competition and do your “spying”, you should stick to it! Why double your effort and re-do your homework? If you find players whose play is fairly transparent to you, why look for anybody else? If you have a very good idea about what the raises mean on each turn, how your opponent thinks and what he is capable of, your edge increases dramatically.
Some players feel that poker education is improving the quality of play and makes the games less profitable. The truth is, if you know that your opponent is playing a good, basic game, you know more about their play because their actions at the table are meaningful. They have a pattern.
Your Best Friend
No, I am not talking about dogs (although having a pet can really take loads off!). I am referring to Poker Tracker Omaha. Use it. Let it run on your favorite tables and collect all the data. Sit back, relax, or go to sleep. I routinely keep my omaha software on during the night. In the morning, I check on the players I am interested in. Some of their stats are more familiar to me than my own phone number. I know how often and in which situations they raise, how well they understand the quality of their hand, when they tilt and how to spot it, how aggressive they are…etc. You do not need to collect the data via the “caveman” manual method of watching the table. Your computer can do that for you. How easy is that? Put some distance between you and your competition.
How to win at the casino with $20. When You Cannot Beat that @#$ing Limit
One final tip that is extremely useful. Suppose you cannot beat a certain limit. Here’s something that helps. Collect a mass of detailed data on the players who can! You will likely see that they do certain things (“small things”) differently than you. With Poker Tracker Omaha, winning ceased to be a secret. You become successful by studying success! What’s stopping you?
Happy playing!
For questions regarding this article or to leave comments, please visit the ITH Forums.Name: Email: Website: Review Title: Rating: 24Review: Check this box to confirm you are human.Related Articles: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. $3/6 Omaha should require less of a bankroll for a sensible player than $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 h
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