Omaha - The Pointless Poker Game

As you might have noticed from the title of this topic, I hate Omaha/Omaha Hi/Lo with a passion.

The way I see this game is that it is 95% luck and 5% skill. I find it ridiculous.

Example. If you are playing Limit Omaha Hi and 2 of your 4 cards are aces, and you raise the pot up and get several callers. If the flop then comes something like K 5 5 you are most PROBABLY up against a set of 5s or possibly quads, or possible even kings over 5s.

That is why I think this game is ridiculous, and that you could just call with any old hand preflop and then you rely on luck, every time.

That's all Omaha is, luck.

Does anyone else agree with this?

I do not agree even 1% Omaha is a different beast than holdem. But both require skill and luck.

In Holdem, you can get a very good judge on your hole cards. In Omaha, you can also judge which hands are playable, but not in the same way. 1 pair doesn't mean as much. 2 pair does. 4 to a straight means a lot and if you can pull off either of those while being double suited (2 Club

s & 2

s or whaterver) then all the better.

In holdem you want your good cards to stay good or get better. In Omaha isn't the same game, you want to play good card that have the possibility of getting a whole lot better. Just get your mind into an Omaha game and out of a Holdem game.

I think Omaha does involve more luck than Holdem, with more hole cards, meaning more draws and cards that weren't even a factor in your preflop decision possibly hitting. But obviously there's still skill in the game.

omaha is all about what hands you play and getting away from a flop that doesn't fit. and i find it much easier to know where i am relative to the other players.

if i have a2xx in my hand, and the board has a low, i have the nut low hand. it's just a matter of whether it'll get quartered.

if i have the nut straight, and the board pairs and i either get bet into or check raised, i'm very sure my str just got sunk by a boat.

what makes omaha so nice (especially limit) is that most players will chase way beyond what they should.

Fishstick just made the point that is why i hate the game so much.

Some players will just chase and chase hands so they can make absolutely anything.

I disagree with Humphrind about saying that Omaha is no different to Holdem. You can never apply the same tactics used in Limit Holdem to Limit Omaha, you will just get outdrawn so many more times because so many more players will chase hands which makes the chances of an opponent hitting something so much higher.

I just see it as a Crazy Poker game where ANY hand can and WILL win. No-one can put anyone on a hand because there are so many different hands that player can have, there is little skill and a lot of luck in Omaha (ESPECIALLY in Omaha Hi/Lo).

I've played a few Mixed Games Tournaments on BugsysClub.

The game changes between Limit Holdem, Limit Omaha Hi/Lo and Limit 7 Card Stud every 10 minutes.

But the more I play Omaha Hi/Lo the more I come to hate it.

You very rarely win pots with 2 pair of 3 of a kind in Omaha, you need a QUALITY (full house and above) hand to be sure of winning a pot.

I find straights and flushes too seceptible (is that spelt right?) to be outdrawn in Omaha, I will even go as far as thinking that if you flop a straight you will win the pot just under 50% of the time.

Of course this could be biased because I seem to get outdrawn in Omaha ridiculously more than anyone else...ever. Confused

*Last edited by heatman on Tue, 10 Aug 2004, 3:14pm; edited 1 time in total*

All this talk of quartering the pot brings up very good point about the value of a made high hand and some ideas about playing it.

Alot of the chasing in Hi-Lo is done by people with an A234 kind of combination. They're hoping for those other three low cards so they can take half the pot. Sometimes there are a couple of these guys in the pot and you can keep them calling raises all the way. Throw in a strong second best high hand, and you've got the making for a typical Omaha pot.

With a made high hand you have to raise to build the pot with the calls from the low hands. Ideal example, you hold 789T of and the flops makes your straigh with no flush draw (like 78J). Now you've got the nut straight, and only two cards to the low. Great chance to get as much money in the pot as possible. Often you'll get A2 to add a few raises in the hope he gets the low.

Its a no lose situation for you, provided your hand holds up. If a low comes, you split a nice pot. If it doesn't, you scoop a very nice pot.

Its because of the fact that its so profitable to take that high hand that I like the big target straight draws, like the one above, and hands where all of the cards are T or higher.

Also, you've got to be aware of the fact that your low hand players often will help you build the pot with a made low hand. Sometimes you'll mis-read this to think this guy is raising against you, when in reality he's raising with you. If you've got a strong hand, but not the nuts, consider those re-re-raises as potential low hand pot builders, and not competition for your high hand.

Moving away from all of this Omaha Hi/Lo quartering talk, time to talk about Omaha Hi.

This game is the game that I hate the MOST (the most!) out of the two. That is because it is so difficult to apply a strategy as to which hands to play and which hands not to play.

Example. If you play a hand with two aces in it, you will end up losing to a straight/flush/full house or better (Note I said you WILL end up losing to a better hand).

That is why (and I'm sure you will disagree) I think that any hand is playable in Omaha high because with 4 cards to each player, anything can hit on the flop.

i really like omaha hi pot limit, i played a tourney a few nights ago with around 275 players, and was able to come in 20th i beleive very good for my first time, audi also played for first time and came in 30th or so, it was a really fun experience and a nice change, and in pot limit starting hands are everything!

Well put Fishy.

This is all gold. Are we getting through to you Dwarfman?

How can you bet to ruin their pot odds at drawing in limit?

Also, dwarfman reminded me of a cool hand Hellmuth wrote an arcticle on a while back, when he mentioned having the nuts on the turn in Omaha, but half the deck may hurt you.

Note, this is truly insane: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/archives/?a_id=13027

A guy has the pure nuts on the turn in Omaha in a 6 way pot, and every remaining card in the deck completes someone else's draw, so he's drawing dead with the nuts!

after taking a major hit in my bankroll because of omaha hi, i figure most people would think i hate this game.

well the thing is, you need even more patience with omaha. with holdem generally you should be only playing around 20-30% of your hands. with omaha, it's closer to like 5%.

firstly you need cooperating hands, and usually you can see the flop for a cheap BB call. if you don't have more than 20 outs, throw your hand away.

one time i had the nut flush draw. i went all in during the flop. my spade never came, and 2 people both hit their straights and took all my money away.

the ideal hand after flop you should be looking for is 2 different draws. this would be flush+straight draw. fullhouse+flush draw. fullhouse+straight draw. things like that you should bet and call/reraise bets. if you are only on a single draw, fold. you won't win. if you're lucky enough to get a triple draw or even quad draw that's when you should bet big or go all in.

i think the biggest problem with omaha is because everyone who plays it comes from holdem. good holdem players know patience is important. so they expect that since you have 4 cards now, you don't need as much patience. well it's much to the contrary, you need even MORE patience to win at omaha. it's also a problem for tight-aggressive players, because they are in the mindset that once you play something you should be aggressive. while be a viable strategy in holdem, this will be your downfall in omaha. fold the flop if you have nothing. bluffing does not work in omaha.

i'm still learning omaha myself, so this is all from my own knowledge and my limited internet reading. there aren't many good omaha sites out there (especially hi). so if any of you think i'm wrong, tell me so i can improve my game.

The thing about Omaha is so many people don't understand how to play it. And these people are the ones that make it frustrating for the people that think (and probably do have a fair idea) they do know how to play. Basically when I look at my Omaha starting hands (I have only played Omaha Hi), I want a hand that can improve to be the nuts. So when I get my hand, I look and think, how many ways can this improve to be the nuts.

Are their nut flushes?

Straights? Even if I hit my straight will it be good enough? (Never play a straight on a board that has paired, or has got flush possibilities)

Full houses? Even if I hit my full house, will it be good enough? (That's right, it's quite common to get full house over full house, or even four-of-a-kind over full house.)

Suited cards under 10 are worthless, so if you have them make sure you have other cards that can make your hand (like a 4-card straight for example). Never EVER play on with an overpair. Never play on with a straight draw unless the board is rainbow and the next card is cheap (and even then, it better be the nut straight you're drawing for).

The problem with people in this game is not so much the drawing (which is also a huge problem), but the overestimation of their hand's value. An example the other day was when I flopped the nut straight (7 T J with the 8 9 in my hand) on a rainbow board. Bingo I though, bet, raise, re-raise, re-re-raise, call and I'm all in, and what BETTER hand to be all in on!? Needless to say the guy hits runner-runner clubs and flushes me out. What did he have after the flop? A pair of Kings!!!!! He though his overpair was good enough to go all-in on! I couldn't believe someone could see an overpair, and think it even playable, let alone all-inable!

It's these sorts of occurances that make people like our friend here hate this game so much. But if you are patient, and do wait for hands that can turn into the nuts, I believe this is a very beatable game.

Jesus! This topic is STILL going? I like wrote the first post of this in the summer of 1973!

Anyway, I've watched the 2004 WSOP Omaha Hi/Lo competition, and my opinion has still not changed. Watching it I was thinking 'crikey, he can catch pretty much anything on the flop and win', or 'well he has the nuts on the flop, but he probably won't win'. Its just not normal! Stupid bloody game is Omaha.

Omaha is very much a game of odds - in the sense that it very much isn't about luck, but about making the right (and often complicated) mathematical choice. The game really starts when the flop is revealed... the best hands in the game are only about ~71% to win (AAKK ds) before that. Its important to note that you end up losing more than not when you miss the flop entirely with the big hands... and you lose (~) 7444 vs 13207. Omaha requires you to use the flop... can't afford to have it dead.

It is also a game where hitting the nut hand on the flop can be worse odds than having no hand at all, and/or give very unintuitive results. For example, the hand Cue Ball 66 had (absent of information that he gave), he only had a ~75% chance of winning the hand. That's not really a lock at all. In the some of the worst break-even cases (ie: AKKQ ds), flopping the middle straight on a rainbow board gives him only a 50.44% chance of winning, fully enumerated (with two random cards in his hand other than the 78). There are a lot of 'moderate' calls his opponent could make - he could have KQ, Q9, AKQ, TT, JJ, 77. While underdogs, they range from 30-45% winners, combining them causes him to be a favorite (ie: JJKQ, TT9Q), turning the nut straight into a ~40% winner.

High low is even worse. Its easy to get the clear cut hands and win - often that's good enough at the low limits... but its the edge that needs to be pushed later on. That takes a lot more variance and hard hits. Hi/Low requires far more math and reads to work out odds.

I would say, generally, the problem with this game is that there isn't enough luck involved. What holdem has going for it is being able to put a person on a hand because the possible number of combinations of his cards is low. In omaha, there are just too many possibilities, so it turns into a game of pure math rather than reads. Not really poker to most people.

Most ring games at the pro level involve a massive amount of patience... a order of magnitude more than holdem. Where you may play 10-20% of holdem hands, doing so at the higher stakes (where raises are nearly universal) is near suicide. The lack of patience from the newer players is what feeds the pros money in this game.

I just started playing .25/.50 O8 (high/low) on Stars.
Someone mentioned it on IRC, and I remembered an article I read when I first started playing poker for realz.

http://www.playwinningpoker.com/omaha/

It's only a couple pages long, but it can be shortened further:
only play the nuts.

I like O8, because I like games where I can slowly make money without paying much attention (.5/1 LHE on Party, where I have tracking software). I only pay attention when I have a good hand (no bluffing, so no real need to read players)

I tried Pot Limit, because it seemed more lucrative - but the players are a little better, and it really HURTS when your nuts get counterfieted. Lost about 10BB overall, much of it when I got overboated., I only played for a couple hours though.

Since I'm the only one who ever raises preflop - I will raise with A2XX or AAXX, or even KKYY where YY are good cards (like another pair, or 23)

I limp in with like 23 looking for an A, and other coordinated hands (AXsXX or double suited connectors or two pair two suited)

I usually want to to get the nut low, ,and fluke a scoop. Other things to watch for are flops with 2-3 high cards (no lows!) since most of the chasers are low, you can win with trips and such (as long as you watch those draws 3 suited or paired board).

as someone once said "Omaha is a game that was invented by a Sadist and is played by Masochists."

Im not the biggest fan of Omaha! I just find it MUCH harder to be able to put my opponent on a hand, because they could have anything with those four cards!

Low limit omaha8 is ridiculously profitable because there's so much dead money in the pots. Personally I play higher limits O8 but my friend who's building his bankroll plays .25/.5 and .5/1 on stars and makes quite solid profit. It's not because he's lucky, it's just careful starting hand selection. Post flop play in omaha8 is quite easy, so your main edge imo is in starting hand selection. Good hands in omaha are heads and shoulders above crappy hands in multiway pots, much more so that holdem.

Not playing hands like Ac2h5hTd is weak tight to the extreme.

Just came across this thread

DM, I've never played Omaha, but one should not write off any game. Since this is an old post, I think you've learned that by now. There's a strong case to be made that hold 'em is the worst game one could play nowadays, because so many people are playing it and the competition is much keener than for O8 or 7CS.

You need to know you best/favorite game, but also be able to go where the profit is. And to think flexibly enough that you can succeed at your non-preferred game.

That is so ridiculous! This hand is heads and shoulders above other hands in a multiway pot. I raise with this hand! Not only do you have a2 with a 5 you're freerolling a baby flush draw and a 3 card straight draw. There's money to be made in only taking half the pot! Badger says that good omaha players break even by splitting and profit by scooping, are you willing to give away your break even money? If you think A25T is a bad hand, I shudder to think where you place the cutoff for good!

Maybe you don't believe me. Here's some stats comparing A25T vs hands that guys were actually showing down in ring games:

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=720738
pokenum -o8 ac 2h 5h td - qs ts 2c 3h - 4c 4h 5c 2d - ks kd 8c 7s - qd jc tc 3d
Omaha Hi/Low 8-or-better: 201376 enumerated boards
cards scoop HIwin HIlos HItie LOwin LOlos LOtie EV
Ac Td 5h 2h 20014 36902 160856 3618 61139 43762 4219 0.290
Qs Ts 2c 3h 1301 1814 186718 12844 37505 46662 612 0.124
5c 4c 2d 4h 9213 33547 164621 3208 19116 90180 4219 0.154
Ks 7s 8c Kd 33281 72666 128635 75 2378 50989 0 0.266
Jc Tc Qd 3d 16608 40631 148137 12608 0 0 0 0.166

This hand has the most EV of them all! And you want to fold it?

all those hands just suck worse.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=720835
pokenum -o8 ad 2d as 3s - ac td 5h 2h - ah 2s ks 4h - 9s ts jd qd
Omaha Hi/Low 8-or-better: 376992 enumerated boards
cards scoop HIwin HIlos HItie LOwin LOlos LOtie EV
As 3s Ad 2d 40317 105982 261855 9155 26024 7428 173812 0.299
Ks 2s Ah 4h 37994 79665 287101 10226 10830 22622 173812 0.246
Ts 9s Qd Jd 83220 148542 228450 0 0 0 0 0.307
Ac Td 5h 2h 15775 32577 334189 10226 3408 30044 173812 0.147

look ma! i can skew results too!

I just picked the first 4 hands that i saw at the showdown, whereas you've given 3 out of 4 guys in the pot a2, which would be truly unlucky. My hands are actually real!

If someone has those hands performance vs random hands programs they can run it with a25T.

You ask any hi stakes positive expectation omaha 8 player if he'd play a25T and i would honestly be suprised if they didnt play it unless they were in the blinds.

gabe: Sure, most omaha hands suck. But people still play them! These are hands that guys were actually SHOWING DOWN (not all in the same pot of course). There just aren't enough good cards in the deck to think having a25T in a 5 way pot is -EV!

Not playing A25T is so ridiculously weak tight. It's like not playing AQo.

Don't know of any programs for Omaha =(.

Hrm, pokerstat claims to do omaha....investigating now

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