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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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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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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