The fact of the matter is that most of the time when you are playing Omaha, you are going to be playing a drawing hand. It is a rare occasion that you can flop the nuts and have it hold up through the river. That being the case, you just need to make sure that you are drawing to the nuts and not setting yourself up for a monster hit to your stack.

As you probably already know, when you are playing Omaha Poker, just about all the cards are going to be dealt out on a full table. This makes it very dangerous to draw to anything but the nut flush and the high end of the straight. Doing anything else is a foolish play and will land you in the poor house.

This all goes back to starting hands to make sure that you do not get trapped in a hand that you have no shot of winning. If a flush hits the board and you are sitting on a J high draw, forget about going after the flush. With the amount of cards out, it is unlikely that your suited Jack is the best flush draw at the table.

While flushed are generally pretty easy to get out of the way of, straights are an entirely different matter. This is where people make the biggest mistakes in reading the board and making sure that they have the best hand. It is also where hold’em players go to die.

A bottom end straight that you can play strong in hold’em is of little use in Omaha. If you have problems letting it go, get over it quickly. The only straights that you can play are the high end and a 2 gapper that you have plugged. If you are sitting on two cards that make the straight and one of them is also on the board, let it go unless it is an A high straight.

The reason this hand is so tricky is strictly a mental block. After years of playing hold’em, players are convinced that their straight has to be good with no boat or flush on board. It will only take you a few pots to realize how wrong this mindset is. Remember, if you are not drawing to the nuts, the hand is not worth being in, period. The amount of money that you will lose chasing down these hands will far outweigh the small percentage of times that it actually holds up. Let it go and wait for the next deal.

Yes, the games are similar, but the biggest mistake most beginning players make when they are starting out is in thinking that they can start with the same starting hands and bet the way they would in hold’em. If you do, you are doing nothing more than making a donation to everyone else at the table.

The first difference in the two games is that you are going to get dealt 4 cards in the hole instead of 2. This is very important to know as if you are playing on a full table, just about every card in the deck is going to be dealt out. This means that you are going to have to play cards very carefully going into the river as many a great hand has gone on to die a slow death when that card has been turned over.

Playing Omaha before the flop is much different than no limit. While you will see the occasional raise, it is few and far between to see the game get capped or consecutive raises happen before the flop is dealt out. In most cases, the only hands that even consider raising are AAxx and KKxx, but doing so causes a major problem. Basically, everyone at the table knows what you have at that point and can play accordingly.

The reason you will see a lot of callers before the flop and not much raising is that the possibility of hands is endless. Yes, you still need to be selective in what you play, but with four cards in your hand, you just never know what kind of shape you are in until the flop hits.

Ideally, you want to start the hand off with a decent pocket pair with straight and high flush possibilities. AsAh10s5h would be a hand that would have you salivating before the flop. You are sitting with the best pocket pair that you can start with, two nut flush draws and both a high and low flush possibility.

Once the flop hits, the game changes dramatically. Great hands are turned into complete garbage and questionable hands become fortune makers. Once the flop is dealt, take your time and look it over to see every possibility. Even if you are in the lead, you have to look and see what is out there that could beat you. If there is a draw, someone is holding it in their hand.

If you are playing a straight, you need to make sure that you have the nuts. Since you have to play two cards, it is critical that you have the best two cards on the straight. When you hit a 2 gapper in the middle with no other possibilities, you are locked in. However, if you are sitting on 46 to a flop of 257 and then an 8 hits, you could be in a heap of trouble. You immediately go from the nuts to the low end of the straight. If you fire a bet and someone comes over top of you, you can be pretty sure that they are sitting on the 69. If a 9 hits the river, everyone is now looking down the barrel of a J10 that will steal it on the river.

More than any other game, it is extremely important to watch and see what kinds of hands people start out with. Omaha invites chasers and there are those that will play solid and there are those that will literally play any four cards. You better know the difference when you get into a pot with them.

Omaha Poker is an action game and even the best of hands can turn into complete rags once that flop hits the board. This is one of the primary reasons that you will only see marginal raises before the flop and you will also see a lot of callers. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to get people out of the hand unless you are in position and playing PL Omaha.

Under the Gun
This is the most brutal position to be in with a big hand, especially when you are playing Pot limit Omaha Poker. You look down and see AdAsKdQs and you want to slam the pot, but you are only going to be getting a marginal bet in and you are not going to scare anyone. In actuality, you are only going to serve the complete opposite and make them very much aware of what you are holding. You are going to have to show some restraint here and limp in hoping for someone else to at least double the blinds and give you a real chance to hammer the pot.

If everyone else just falls in line, you are going to have to see how the flop plays out. Remember, you are not playing hold’em here and AA is not as big a hand as it is in that game. The ideal situation would have a couple of callers and then someone making a small raise with all of those players in. This is when you come right over the top and make a pot limit raise. You will chase all of the other limpers and if the raiser does call you, you have a very good chance of having 2 of his outs sitting in your hand. You definitely want isolation here if it all possible and that pot limit raise should get it for you.

Middle Position
When you get a big hand here, you are going to have to play it much the same way as you did in early position unless you get a couple of limpers in front of you. One is really not enough to get enough money into the pot to scare a marginal hand, but if there are two in there, you can absolutely let the raise fly. Again, you are basically showing your hand, but you have to scare some players out and deal with the callers on the flop.

Late Position
In an un-raised pot and several limpers, you are in a strong position to take this hand down pre-flop with a nice raise here. If there are no callers, you should still fire at the pot to make the blinds at least think about it before they get to limp in for free. Your hand is also not so obvious as you could just be looking to steal and may even see someone play back at you. That is a dream circumstance because now you can really lay into the pot.

You do have one other option when there are a lot of players in the pot, but it is a dangerous one. With that many players in the hand, you can limp in and see how the flop hits. You risk losing all of those blinds, but you also could hit along with someone else and have a totally concealed hand. This is something you may do when you are ahead of the game and can afford to throw away a possible pre-flop scoop. This will also give a little variance to your game and have them guessing the next time around.

Remember, you can never play the hands identically time and time again. If you don’t change up your style, you are telegraphing your hand to everyone as the table. When you are running good, you can make a move in middle or late position with lesser cards to represent a hand that you don’t have. You may even choose to show one of those when everyone folds to you to set them on tilt. Once you get them guessing, you hold an extreme edge and can set trap after trap.

If you mention that you play poker to the average person on the street, they will almost always assume you mean Texas Hold’em. Tournament Texas Hold’em was accepted as “the poker game” when the poker boom hit the United States in 2003, after Chris Moneymakers historic World Series of Poker Main Event victory. Millions of college students, middle aged men and women, and retirees began playing the game which was made famous through ESPN’s coverage.

Many people inside the game of poker only play Texas Hold’em and many of these people do not even understand the other forms of poker that are our there. I recently hosted my weekly home poker game and decided to make it a dealer’s choice game. I selected Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, and 7 card stud as my dealer’s choice games and had to explain the rules and concepts of the games numerous times. A few of my friends, who are quite talented Texas Hold’em players, were not big fans of these new games, as they did not fully understand the strategies to excel at the new games and could not be bothered to apply themselves. A few of the other players at the game, loved the new additions. They liked the added action created in Omaha, as well as the new information and betting rounds created in Stud and Razz.

There are so many different and unique caveats of each game, that it creates new and different challenges amongst each game. I, like many, first learned how to play Texas hold’em competitively. I got into Omaha by playing online and reading books such as Super System. At the time I first got into Omaha, I was a bit burnt out on Texas hold’em. That’s what really got me interested in playing Omaha competitively. Learning the nuisances of this game type and the different strategies involved with Omaha brought back my passion for playing poker. I became a student of the game again, studying and learning everything I could about the game. In the end, I became much better at Omaha, but these strategies and new thought processes also helped me in my Texas hold’em game as well.

Some sites do not offer every form of poker or have as high as volume of games in these different games that they do in Texas hold’em. However, most of the large sites and many medium sized sites have many game types. Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Ultimate Bet all offer games in Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha H/L, Razz, 7 Card Stud and 7 Card Stud H/L. Just like Texas Hold’em, these sites offer micro stakes, .01/.02, low stakes, $1/2, medium stakes, $10/$20, and large stakes, $50/$100 and above. I would suggest starting at very low stakes for Omaha if you are just learning the game. It is a very fast paced game and you don’t want to blow your whole bankroll before you even understand the game.

Throughout the next few weeks, I will take you on a journey through the various forms of Omaha and the challenges with each form and game stype. I will not only give you a better understanding of Omaha Hi and Hi/Lo, but I will teach you some proven winning strategies for each form of Omaha and the various opportunities involved with each game.

I have heard many people explain as Omaha, “It’s the same as Texas Hold’em, but you get 4 cards instead of two.” They then deal the cards and the person who received this information, still doesn’t really know what’s going on. While the overall concept of the game of Omaha, could be perhaps very simply explained as Texas Hold’em with 4 cards, we fail to recognize the essential rules of the game that make Omaha a much different and sometimes more complex game then Texas Hold’em.

Throughout the next few weeks and months, I will be spilling my thoughts and strategies about the great game of Omaha to you, as well as some of the strategies of the World’s best Omaha players. But before we begin, I want to explain the game in more detailed to some of our beginning readers.
Omaha is similar to Texas Hold’em in the fact that there will be a flop, turn and a river card visible as community cards. Just like Texas Hold’em, they are used by all players. The betting rounds are also the same as Texas Hold’em, with betting pre flop, post flop, post turn and post river. These are where the obvious similarities stop and the game of Omaha becomes a unique identity, even to players who have played hold’em their whole lives.

Before I get into the details of the game of Omaha, I should explain that there are various forms of Omaha including: Hi, Hi/Lo, 8 and Better Hi, as well as Pot Limit and No Limit for each of these games. We will focus on each of these game types in due time, but for the explanation of Omaha, I will use Pot Limit Omaha Hi, as it is the most common cash and tournament form on Omaha.

In Omaha the two players to the immediately to the left of the dealer are required to post a small and big blind. In some cash games, there may also be a straddle placed on the next to act or antes present in tournaments. Each player then receives 4 face down cards. Players are then given the option to call the blind, fold or to raise pre-flop in order. Players can only raise the size of the pot. Therefore, unless there has been multiple re-raises, you will not see players all-in pre flop, as in Hold’em. After the first round of betting is complete, the players see the flop of 3 community cards, just as in hold’em.

After the flop, there is another round of betting, starting from the dealers left. Again, players can check, bet, raise or fold, depending on the action in front of them. The bets and raises can not be greater than the size of the pot. After the completion of the betting, the turn is dealt. After the 4th community card comes out there is another round as betting with the same rules as post flop. Once again, when the betting is complete the final card is dealt, the river. Players now have their last opportunity to bet or fold. After the completion of betting, players “showdown” their hands. The best 5 card combination, using 2 and only 2 of the players 4 hole cards wins. This is a unique facet of Omaha Poker, that many beginners don’t realize or fail to remember. Players must always use 2 and only 2 of their hole cards. Therefore if the community board reads 4h 4s Ac 7d 7s and you have 4d 2c Qh 10s, you do not have a full house with 4’s full of K’s as you would in hold’em with a 4 in your hand. Your best possible combination would be 3 of a kind 4’s and a Q kicker. Therefore, if someone else held 4c and a K kicker, they would win, as the A and K plays as their kickers. The same occurs if there are 4 spades on the board and you only have 1 spade. You do not have a flush, as you need 2 spades in your hand.

We will get into recognizing these situations more accurately, but you must be aware that you have to use 2 of your cards. This is a very big mistake that many beginners use. Now that we have gotten through the rules of the game, we will delve into the strategies involved in the various forms of Omaha. Join me tomorrow in our quest for becoming betterOmaha players.