Poker

The recent surge in the popularity of poker has had a rippling effect. While many new players are joining the game, many experienced players are trying their hand at new games. Some limit Hold???em players are branching out to play No Limit Hold???em and quite a few of them are trying the game of Omaha. Their downfall is that they think they can win at Omaha using Texas Hold???em Strategy.Omaha may look like Hold???em because it is played with five community cards but that is where the similarities end. In Hold???em you can use any five card combination. In Omaha you Must use two card from your hand and three cards from the board.

Starting Hands
In Omaha you get four personal cards instead of two. Some players may think that this gives them double the starting hand combinations but in reality with four cards you have six possible two card combinations. You have four cards ABCD The combinations are AB CD AC BD AD BC.

With all these starting combinations, Hold???em players think that this gives them reason more hands. You have to remember that each of the other players also has 6 two card starting combinations so in a ten handed game you have 6 combinations but your opponents have 54 amongst them. You actually need to be more selective.

Starting hands need to be coordinated. This means that the four cards should work together such as having a straight possibility that may wrap around the flop. Double suited hands that contain aces are good for the nut flush however three or four cards of the same suit is a garbage hand in most instances as you diminish your flush possibilities.

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Online poker is crammed full of “good” games. A good game is understood to be loose, with lots of players staying and paying through the nose to see the flop. There is a lot of betting action in a “good” game, with many pots capped. But this type of game is only good for a very specific style of play, one that requires a level of discipline and patience that very few players, good, bad, or otherwise, genuinely possess. Besides that, the much-repeated theory that these games belong to the “rocks”, those bastions of strong-tight play, is questionable at best and quite possibly incorrect, at least not without significant modifications.

There is a circle of profit in poker that a lot of successful players are aware of, even if they cannot articulate it in as many words. Basically it goes like this: rocks will beat maniacs; maniacs will actually beat crafty players who mix it up a lot, and crafty players (let’s call them “foxes” in honor of the famous article on poker tournament strategy written by Chuck Thompson years ago) will beat rocks. Inside this circle, and well and truly surrounded by all three types of player, we find the passive-weak players, derisively referred to as “calling stations”. It is safe to say that this type of poker player is beaten more often and by more types than any other. There is a good deal of subjectivity when it comes to hold’em strategy and poker theory in general, but one issue is not a matter of opinion or interpretation: passive players who call repeatedly at any level will eventually lose all their chips

The beauty of poker is that each discrete game where you sit down will have its own character, and that character is also dynamic and fluid. It takes only one strong table personality to shift a game, making other players around him more or less aggressive. Because poker is ultimately a situational battle, there is no single overriding answer to the question of how to play the game well. One must, however, constantly adjust and vary one’s own game, reacting to the manner in which your opponents play while keeping your own style as enigmatic as possible.

If you play in an online limit game where there is a high pre-flop percentage, with five or more regularly staying to see the flop (in a full ten-handed game), you will need to adjust your game away from the standard strong-tight school of thought and become more of a fox. There are certain holdings that are cherished by strong-tight players, but which really struggle to hold up in these frenetic online games. AQ (unsuited), QQ, KQ (suited or unsuited), JJ, and AJ (unsuited) are all deceptively dazzling, and my contention is that in loose online limit games these hands all cost money in the long run.

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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 actually is a pretty 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.

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This companion to the Introduction to Omaha Poker Strategy is needed because something about Omaha HiLo seems to lead to the true nature of the game being concealed beneath a shroud of fantasies. New myths pop up every day. This is surprising since Omaha is mostly a straightforward game. In fact, this is first Omaha myth to expose:

Myth: “Omaha is a complicated game.”
Obviously all poker games have levels of complexity, but the contrasts between Omaha and its closest cousin, Texas Holdem, reveal Omaha to be much simpler. Holdem decisions are full of uncertainty, randomness, and the complexity born of one simple fact — in many hands, all players involved have basically nothing. Suppose AcTs raises before the flop from one in front of the button, QhJh calls on the button, and 7d6d calls in the big blind. Suppose a flop comes down of 9d8h8c. The winner of this pot will often be determined by who plays the craftiest from the flop on. Situations like this occur all the time in Holdem.

In contrast, in most Omaha games you seldom play hands head-up on the flop, and anytime there are three or more players in a pot either: one player will have a clearly better hand than the others, or more than one player will have a solid hand, or any bet from any player will be able to win the pot on a bluff (because no one has anything at all). Each Omaha hand has many more ways to connect with a flop. Twelve cards in three hands don???t just have double the ways to hit a three card flop, if only because Omaha8 offers players the chance to ???win??� by either making a high hand or a low hand.

Very often Omaha hands come down to simply calculating your chances of winning all or part of a pot. The principle variable becomes how you manipulate the size of the pot via the betting. True, situations do occur that are similar to the one facing the QJ in the Holdem example above, where getting the AT to fold greatly increases the value of the hand (even if the player doesn???t know it). Correctly playing in these situations does separate great players from average ones, and a significant chunk of Omaha profit comes here, but these situations are rare. They don???t occur every hand, or maybe even every nine hands. Most Omaha situations come down to calculating your “outs” — counting the number of cards that make your hand and translating that into a percentage. The rare, complicated situations are very important, but the common situations are quite uncomplicated. Omaha is usually a simple game: play hands before the flop that can easily make a straightforward nut hand, and play hands after the flop where you are getting correct odds on making the nut hand. (And again, manipulate the betting as favorably as you can.)

Handling the complex aspects of the game can only come after understanding the basic simplicity of most of the game. The problem that most Omaha players run into is screwing up (and unnecessarily complicating) the simple aspects of the game. If you play QJT4, and get a flop of KJ4, you???ll likely spend a lot of time thinking about how “complicated” Omaha is. You throw that garbage in the muck before the flop, and the game is much simpler.

Again, there are complicated aspects to the game, but most players don???t ever even get to the point of seeing the real complexities because they get themselves involved in situations that are only complicated in the same way as: “if I throw my car keys into the ocean, how will I ever find them?” Or, “if I throw a handful of quarters out the front door, how will I ever find them all?” Both of those are incredibly difficult problems to solve — except the solution is to simply never throw your car keys in the ocean or your quarters out the front door.

Myth: “Omaha Starting Hands Run Close Together in Value”
This is the silliest myth of all, especially when it comes to real game conditions. The root of this myth comes from the fact that head-up Omaha hands seldom have a dominating relationship in the same way that AA dominates A7 in Holdem. The head-up phenomenon means that you should liberally defend your big blind against a single raiser when you have any sort of reasonable hand. You will be getting correct pot equity to do so.

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The first thing to understand is that online poker is not the same as brick & mortar casino poker (hereafter I’ll call this “casino poker”). They are different games. I???m not saying one is better than the other, or necessarily more or less profitable. They are just different in fundamental ways. Many of the abilities needed to win in casino poker of course also exist in online poker. You still need good starting cards… you still shouldn’t tilt… you still shouldn’t play at a level you can’t afford, and so on. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel on that stuff. Check out the rest of this website, the poker magazines and books to study those things that are the same online as in a casino. A flush beats a straight online. We don’t need to go over that.

Signing Up
Joining an online site is simple. You use an online payment service like Neteller (see below) or give them your credit card to buy chips just like you would buy a book at Amazon or a plane ticket at United Airlines. You don’t even have to do that at first. You can play free games without giving any credit card information. You should play the free games for at least an hour or so to get the hang of how fast the action goes, what buttons to click, what happens when you click a button that you aren’t sure what it does, all the bells and whistles of how the site works. The free games have little value in learning to play to win though. They are excellent for a total novice, offering newbies a way to practice calculating basic odds on the fly and discovering the relative strengths of hands, but you still should get off free games as soon as you can. Even playing the .5/.10 games will offer you far more useful learning opportunities than the free games.

Give thought to your login name. Some people want to be distinctive, memorable. Others want to be as anonymous as possible. Your screen name is the first bit of “table image” you present to the other players. Choose one that presents the personality you want to convey to your opponents.

Building an Online Poker Bankroll
The first enormous difference you confront between playing online and in a casino is when you go to buy chips. Card rooms generally limit how much you can deposit each day. Winning ring game poker is all about putting in hours. If all games are about equal, and you always play the same winning way, the more you play, the more you make. So, putting yourself out of action by losing your bankroll is a critical mistake.

In casino poker, you can reach into your pocket and grab more cash (for good or ill). Not so online. The first thing you need to do is build an online bankroll. No matter what you are properly bankrolled to play in a casino, when you first join you have to be sure you don’t play over the head of your online bankroll, or you might put yourself out of action temporarily, until you can get more cash online. Basically, you can’t play correctly online until you have accumulated a correct bankroll.

A quicker way to build you bankroll at most online poker rooms is to transfer funds from an existing player.

The online cardrooms have their reasons for limiting buy-ins, from protecting players from blowing their brains out in one session to not wanting to deal with substantial contested credit card charges. While these are legitimate concerns on the cardrooms’ part, the restricted buy-in is an artificial obstacle to winning that has to be overcome by new players. After establishing a record of play over a period of time, players can Email customer support for an increase in the different bankroll restrictions.

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Technically, the word “Holdem” refers to the some-cards-in-your-hand/some-cards-on-the-board, four betting rounds structure. But it has commonly become associated with the Texas version. Texas Holdem is generally considered “Holdem”, while Omaha Holdem is merely “Omaha.” Birthed of the same mother structure, Omaha and Holdem have similarities, but like siblings they also have dramatic differences when it comes to winning strategy. Understanding these sibling differences can lead to each of us making better game selection choices and recognizing our own strengths as poker players.

Some of the differences stem from logistics. When playing in a casino, approximately twice as many hands are dealt an hour in Holdem. Omaha is usually played HiLo. Holdem players usually have a wider variety of games to choose from. Omaha games have more regulars. Besides these things, there are many more complicated differences.

If your aim is to win, Holdem requires more risk-taking, more variance. Winning Holdem is all about exploiting tiny edges, and even more, creating tiny edges. Holdem skill often comes into play in turning 55/45 edges into 60/40 ones. Obviously that is a good, profitable thing to do, but just as obviously it takes something of a long run to make these small edges add up. Great Holdem players find nickels and dimes and dollars of value in hand after hand — getting free cards, protecting (or not protecting) blinds, value betting, inducing bluffs, etc. Very good winning players don???t depend on showing down AK against KQ on a KJ742 board. Showing the best hand is the bedrock of winning, but it is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Omaha has quite a lot of differences. For very good players, Omaha edges are usually huge. Against weak Texas Hold’em opponents, a very good player can play a lot more hands. This is not the case in Omaha. While 76s can sometimes become playable in Holdem, 9764 is never playable in Omaha High Low (outside of maybe putting in one more chip in a two chip small blind) regardless of how lousy your opponents are. While the faster-paced Holdem is all about the application of many tiny edges time and again, glacier-paced Omaha is more about waiting for rare instances of enormous advantage. These huge advantages occur because most players simply do not “get” that when played properly Omaha has very little gamble to it, with less playable hands than Holdem — especially “playable hands per hour”. Loose-ish Omaha games mostly come down to simple math. A pot has so many chips in it, and you have so many outs to make the winning hand. You are either getting the right price, the wrong price, or the very, very right price.

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Concentrate your table position and strong starting hands

This is a common rule and one that should be adheared to if one is to become a sucessful online poker player. This is due to the fact that most online players are involved in way to many pots and see way too many flops, mainly with marginal to weak starting hands. It is permissiable to play marginal hands in late position when there is no action in front of you. The way to beat these super-loose online players is to just tighten up and wait for the right cards at the right time so you can felt someone.

Avoid playing too loose online

Again, this goes back to tightening up your play against these super-loose online players. In the long-run you, as a tighter more disciplined player, will be more successful and take down more pots. These loose-as-a-goose players try to see way too many pots, maybe because of the low limits, maybe because of the action. Whatever the reason, tighten up your play and take down those pots.

Practice reading the flop

Since the speed of online play is part of its allure, the games move at a much faster pace. Being able to immediately scan a flop and determine the “nuts” or best possible hand, is imperative. Does the flop have a possible straight or flush draw? Who may have hit the flop? More importantly, who missed the flop all together? McEvoy reccomends sitting out a few rounds the first time you start a game or new table session to get a feel for the style of play you’re up against.

Adjust to the speed of the online game

This one is pretty self explainitory, but important still. In a Brick & Mortar casino a player can expect to see around 30 hands an hour. This number can be expected to easily hit 50 hands per hour in an online casino and one must be able to adjust to the faster pace. There are several reasons for this, first, the online “dealer” is much faster than a live dealer in a casino. Second, there is a time clock that immediatelt begins to run as soon as the action is on you which causes an annoying beep when you have delayed too long. If a decision isn’t made 10-20 seconds after this period, the players hand is automatically folded and play continues. There is a way around this however, a player may request an additional period of time when faced with a very tough situation such as an all-in call. This feature is available on most gambling websites.

Take notes when you play

This one, in my opinion, is a biggie. On most sites there is a little “notes” box that you can click on and jot down small tidbits of information along and along during a game. An example of this would be keeping a list of hands that a particular player shows down. Another example would be to keep track of your own play so that you can review it at a later time and fine-tune your play. Also, when playing online at a particular site, one will notice that at certain limits and in certain rooms, it is common to see the same players so keeping track of their betting patterns and what hands they show down is extremely helpful. To this I would add: there are a few great programs out there that auto track lots of information, one must just be certain not to become dependent on this software and use it strictly as a supplement.

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There???s no escaping it - bluffing is an integral part of poker, and Hold ???Em in particular. Successful bluffing can add a surprising amount to one???s win-rate, whereas unsuccessful, ???silly??? bluffing can wipe out a few sessions worth of good work in a matter of minutes.

Many weak players don???t understand the mechanics behind bluffing. They???ve seen some guy on WPT go all-in with no pair no draw and force someone off a better hand and they simply think ???Hey, I could do that!??�. So they go and deposit a few bucks in a poker site or trek down to their nearest casino, try it, and seem aghast when it doesn???t work the first few times. ???Oh well, I was just unlucky, that was just bad timing??� they may think, and so they???ll try it again and again, and they will be unsuccessful more often than not.

So what???s the big mistake they???re making? Are they just ???unlucky??� and a victim of ???bad timing??�? Well, perhaps partly. A certain percentage of poker is unarguably luck-based, especially in the short-term. But more likely they???re bluffing almost randomly, and not taking into account many factors which would turn the odds of their bluffing being successful in their favour.

Good bluffing is primarily situational. A month or two ago I read a post on the forums saying something like ???You should be aiming to bluff x% of the time??�, and not a lot else. This is a rather silly way of looking at bluffing. If I said to you, ???You should be voluntarily putting money into the pot about 20% of the time??� and nothing else, you should be looking at me as if I were mad, because this statistic, much like bluffing, is primarily situational. If you???re at a tight full table or at a 6-max table, you should be raising more preflop and generally seeing more flops, so this figure will obviously be higher. If you???re at a loose-aggressive table, you will be more likely to want to wait for premium hands before playing, so the figure will be lower. Thinking something like ???Oooh, I haven???t bluffed in a while, I???d better bluff now to keep up my quota??� or ???Hmm, I haven???t seen a flop in two orbits, maybe I???ll just limp under the gun with this 84 offsuit??� is just ridiculous, and is one large step on the road to ruin.

So if we can???t determine how to optimally bluff in terms of a percentage, how can we determine it? There are a wide range of situations in which bluffing becomes more feasible and considerations to make before bluffing, some of which are listed below.

The players you are trying to bluff

One of the most widely used sayings in poker is ???Don???t bluff a calling station??�. This is quite simply because you are more likely to be called down by this type of player. This sounds like such an obvious thing to say, but you wouldn???t believe the number of posts I???ve read on various for a along the lines of ???HOW COULD HE CALL MY BLUFF DOWN WITH THAT?????�. One of the reasons you should be paying attention to your table and making notes even when you???re not in a hand is so that you know who can be bluffed off strong hands, and who can???t even be bluffed off Ace-high on a dangerous board.

Your table image

Self-explanatory. If you???ve just been caught bluffing, it???s invariably a bad idea to try it again until the table has had a chance to forget about it. If on the other hand you???ve barely played a hand in two hours at a table, people will respect your bets and raises more, so you???re more likely to get away with a bluff.

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As with Multi Table Tournaments (MTT???s), ‘Sit and Go’ (SNG’s) or ‘Single Table Tournaments’ (STT???s) are also booming in the online poker community.? Along with the standard cash prizes, many of the poker sites offer special promotional Sit and Go’s.? Titan Poker’s Jackpot SNG’s offer a shot at winning as much as $100,000 for winning a set number of consecutive sit and go’s.? Other sites like Absolute Poker set up many sit and go’s as qualifiers to World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour events.

Players enter for a set ???buy in??�. Registration is normally the same as for a ring game ??? you select your table and take your preferred seat. When the table is full, the tourney begins. Each player is given the same number of chips, and play continues until one lucky (or skillful) player has all the chips. Prize structures vary, but normally the last three? players win money, with the winner taking roughly 50% of the prize fund.

Why are STT???s becoming so popular? MTT???s can be hard work, especially if you bust out after two hours, just outside the money. And we???ve all experienced the frustration of sitting patiently in a ring game, only to have AA cracked on the river by 98o.

STT???s offer the chance of first rate recreational play and, for a winning player, steady gains with far lower variance than that offered by a ring game. Here???s how:

Fun - With an STT you???re always in the game. You have to be. With games rarely lasting as long as an hour, you have to bet sooner or later. You must expect to bluff at some stage, and All-Ins are a certainty. Lots of All-Ins! And if you bust out early, there is no need to wait several hours for the next game at your level ??? just sit down at a new table and off you go.

Variance - For winning players, Single? Table Tournament? variance is far smaller than that dealt up by ring games. Your exposure to a bad beat (or a bad decision!) is limited to the entry fee for that tourney. And that very fact promotes bad play from the ???gamblers??� and ???bluffers??� ??? bad play that will fund your STT bankroll.

Easy! All you need to do is to work out how to be a winning Sit-n-Go player, and then the money will flow! Well its not that simple. All poker is situational, and this is especially true in the fast moving environment of the Single? Table Tournament. But the basics set out in these pages should be enough to get you started on the way.

Although there are limit and high stakes SNG???s available, this strategy is based on experience of online, low stakes (up to $20), no limit holdem.

Lets look a little deeper into the Single Table Tournament…

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The multi-table tournament represents the most popular and definitely most televised style of poker play.? The World Series of Poker and? the World Poker Tour, among many others come immediately to mind.? ? An interesting development recently shows the majority of? World Series of Poker? tournament? players now earn their entry to the event through online qualifying tournaments.? Chris Moneymaker (2003) and Greg Raymer (2004) both earned their buy in’s to the World Series of Poker at Poker Stars and went on to win millions of dollars, and now represent Poker Stars to the world!? The structure of these tournaments is quite simple.? For a ???buy in,??� or set amount, players are entered into the tournament.? Every player is then given the same number of chips and seated at as many tables as are necessary, and the elimination begins.? When a player ???busts out,??� he leaves his seat, and remaining players are moved around to ensure equal numbers at each table.? As you can imagine, this takes hours and even days to complete large multi-table tournaments.

All of this concentration, work and drama, for what?? Only the top few finishers will earn money.? If the tourney pays top 10 finishers, and you finish #11, tough luck.? For many players who have had great success in regular ring games, the multi-table tournament is a cruel effigy of failure.? This can be directly traced to the fact that most players do not grasp the changes needed from their ring game style to a tournament style.? Consider some examples:

You hold Ax suited in a regular ring game.? Your course of action would probably be to call at least one, possible two bets, and even raise in late position, if everyone has folded in front of you.? On the other hand, what to do with Ax suited in the early stages of a multi-table tournament?? Almost without fail,? tournament experts will tell you to? dump those cards without wasting a single bet.

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