Poker Strategy – Introduction to Omaha

The Rules

In Omaha Hold’em each player recieves 4 hole cards and everyone shares 5 community cards, similar to Texas Hold’em. The catch is that you must use exactly 2 cards from your hand and 3 cards from the board to make your 5-card poker hand. In general the winning hands in Omaha are much better than the winning hands in Texas; in a game of more than 3 people usually a straight or better wins.

When you are first playing Omaha, you should make sure you are actually using 2 cards from your hand, and not 3 or 1. For example, if the board is K Q J 5 4, and you have A Q 4 4, your hand is only three-of-a-kind 4’s. You do not have full house of 4’s over queens. If the board is A K Q 10 9, then your J J 5 4 is not a straight, since you must use two of your cards.
Why play Omaha?

Omaha Hold’em is not as popular as Texas Hold’em but is played by plenty of fish. Also, a lot of good Texas players want to try out Omaha and are unfamiliar with the game but they may still play at high limits because they are good at Texas. These players generally play too loose.

Also, it is much more of a technical game because it is easy to see what the best hand is, since usually there is a flush or a straight on board and odds are that somebody has one.

Some good places to play low-limit Omaha are Party Poker or Empire Poker (they are on the same network). Another place to play is Paradise Poker but they don’t have as many Omaha players.

Poker Strategy – Low-Limit Omaha Hold’em

At the low limit Omaha Hold’em games, there is easy money if you have the patience. Usually, these games are filled with players who are playing far too loose because everyone thinks that their two-pair is a great hand. The best strategy is to play hands that do well in multi-way pots and bet hard when you have the nuts.

There is another version of Omaha called Omaha hi-lo. In this game the high hand and low hand split the pot. This article will not discuss the hi-lo version; I will only talk about Omaha hi.

Some good places to play low-limit Omaha are Party Poker or Empire Poker (they are on the same network). Another place to play is Paradise Poker but they don’t have as many Omaha players.

Starting hands

In longhanded Omaha there really isn’t any such thing as a “dominant hand” preflop. You could get two Aces and two Kings and still easily get beat. However, that isn’t to say that you should call to the flop with just anything. You should still play tight preflop and wait for a good hand, although now there are many types of good hands, hands that become dominant after the flop hits. The best starting hands in Omaha are hands where you hit two pair and your draw, for example Kh Qc Jh 10c. (A decent flop would be Q J x). Those hands are a bit rare, so another good hand in a loose game would just be a hand with a lot of drawing possibilities. If you are expecting a multi-way pot, then it is important to be drawing to the nuts. In other words, you want to draw to an Ace-high flush, not a 9-high flush. Also, you don’t want to draw toward straights if you have low cards and are likely to end up at the low end of the straight.

You may wish to simply call preflop with drawing hands so as to not scare away the loose-passive players. This way you also risk less if you don’t hit your draw. However, if you hold a hand which has strength in high cards, such as Ah Ad Ks Js, then you should raise. You should also raise with several drawing possibilities to build up the pot, if you feel that people are staying in too much for big pots.

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Hands with only a high pair can sometimes be played. Play AAxx, KKxx definitely; with AAxx you should raise if you think you can knock people out and get the hand heads-up or 3-way. You may experiment with QQxx but that is very borderline. A set would be nice, but sets aren’t so great in Omaha since someone can easily draw a flush or straight on you. With high pairs you really want to hit a high full house, and rob someone who thinks their lower full house is the high-hand. The main reason high pairs are much less valuable than in Texas is because having an Overpair on the flop is worthless in Omaha. Most likely someone else has a two-pair.