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Omaha Hi-Lo:
Omaha Holdem Myths
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.
This head-up concept though has transmuted into the bizarre myth that Omaha
starting hands run close together in value. It’s complete nonsense. Readers can
run simulations, observe games or do whatever other study they want to "prove"
this, but A23K is just a helluva lot better than J965. It will scoop more often,
get a share of the pot much more often, it will be more “bettable” and win
bigger pots because it makes the nuts more often and easier, etc.
The mass of Omaha hands are like J965 -- random crap. The good and great Omaha
hands stand head-and-shoulders above the random crap. They scoop more, split
more, are more bettable, and make less “second best” losers. In Holdem, AA
stands way above the other hands. KK, QQ and AK are not in AA’s league, but they
also aren’t in the league of the rest of the hands either. Omaha has no
equivalent of AA but there is a larger group of hands similar to KK-QQ-AK. And
then there are also more hands in the same league with AQ-JJ-TT-AJ. Then there
is a big drop off, because Omaha does not have the equivalent of 99 or KJ. There
are excellent Omaha hands, good ones, a few speculative ones, and then there is
garbage that is greatly inferior to the good hands.
Myth: "Don’t raise
before the flop."
In most Omaha games a critical and basic concept is to get more
money in before the flop when you have way the best of it. The most obvious
profit in Omaha comes from opponents calling on the turn when drawing dead. This
happens reasonably often but the profit that occurs every single hand, the most
common way to create a profitable edge is to exploit the dramatically different
pre-flop value of Omaha starting hands. Most Omaha games feature players who
play too many garbage hands 789T, 23QJ and even J965. In many games, these
mistakes occur before the flop all the time. This is where the money is to be
made. Since the opportunities arise almost every hand, this is where you
increase your profits hugely in Omaha.
Interestingly, many mediocre players who do understand Omaha is about starting
hands don't "get" that starting hands only exist before the flop. They passively
limp and “wait to see the flop.” If a huge part of Omaha is starting hands, then
aggressively betting your hands before the flop should be an obvious conclusion.
Of course, raising with a hand you want to raise with is not always the best
choice. A234 first to act is just about the worst hand to raise with. You
certainly wish you could raise a bunch of people playing random junk, but you
can’t. You are first. The best choice available is to limp and invite everybody
you can possibly get into the hand -- and hopefully get a raise from another
player. The principle here is that you want to raise, but often you are unable
to. You want to play A234 for two (or more) bets against 789T, 23QJ and J965,
but if raising causes all of them to muck and have you end up playing head-up
against AQ65, you screwed up badly. (More on the above two myths
here.)
Myth: "Never raise
with low."
This bit of gibberish is almost too good to expose. A very
common sight in online Omaha games is to see terrible players raising on a flop
of AJ8 with their naked 23 draws, and then freezing up like a deer in the
headlights when they make their hand on the turn or river. Now, when they HAVE
something they shut down and become callers. In the case of a 23 shutting down
is a good idea (the come-betting and raising is insane), but very often “the
never raise with low” myth will cause players to lose money because they are
absolutely mortified of getting quartered. In Limit Omaha HiLo getting quartered
is seldom a big deal, except head-up. (Pot Limit is a different story.)
Playing $10/20, if betting is capped on all streets three ways, a player will
put $240 into a pot (playing with a bet and three raises). This will make a
total pot of $720. One quarter of that is $180. So, the absolute worst case when
getting quartered is to lose three big bets. Of course, more often the betting
will not be capped on every single street, and there will be dead money in the
pot from other players or from the blinds. You should be aware of situations
where you are likely to get quartered, and bet accordingly, but the obsession
most players have with being quartered is a very big hole in their game.
You should not be thinking about getting quartered. You should be thinking: “Can
I get three-quarters, and if I can, how can I?” You should be raising often when
you have the nut low hand and any sort of high, including as little as AK.
Getting quartered on river raises in three way pots will often cost you one
chip. But when you win three-quarters of a pot by making the better high hand
lay down because of your raise, you will win many chips. For instance, again
playing $10/20, suppose a pot is $200 on the turn. A player you believe has nut
low bets into a K7487 board. You raise with your A24J. Both players call and you
lose to a high hand with Kings up (but you do have the other low hand beat for
high). Your raise will have cost you $5. But now if the player with Kings up
folds, the pot will be $280 and you will get $210 of it (instead of $80 when you
get a quarter of a $320 pot). You risked $5 to win much more than that. Even if
the play works one out of ten times, you make money. More likely it will work
about half the time.
"Never raise with low" is a nonsense statement. When the words pass through
someone's lips, it marks them as a poor player. Omaha hands are always four
cards. Your hand always has more to it than just "low".
Sometimes you won’t have any high hand value yourself, or you will face an
obvious high hand that will not fold, but anytime you have ANYTHING at all for
high, you should be thinking about how might manipulate the betting (usually by
raising) so that you get three-quarters and not one-quarter.
Myth: "You play more Omaha hands than Holdem ones."
This is true of bad players but not good ones. Winning Omaha
causes much smaller bankroll fluctuations than Holdem because that marginal
group of hands that exists in Holdem is largely absent from Omaha. If you only
played AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ and JJ you would not have huge fluctuations if only
because you would fall into a coma between hands. This would be an awful way to
play Holdem because you would be eaten alive by the blinds, but you sure
wouldn’t fluctuate a lot. The playable Omaha hands are on par with the weakest
of these Holdem hands, but there are more of the Omaha hands. You don’t go into
a coma (well, maybe you get close to a coma), and more important, you don’t lose
to the blinds. To beat Holdem you have to play many of second and third tier
hands and situations. These mostly do not exist in Omaha. There are more good or
better Omaha hands, but less playable Omaha hands in total.
Holdem is a game where inspired post-flop play will win a lot of pots without a
showdown. Great players can play more hands profitably than average players
because they can extract profit from inspired play. Opportunities for inspired
play do exist in Omaha, let’s be clear about that, but they are fewer -- and
very rare in "normal" loose games.
A sensible betting strategy can greatly increase your Omaha profit. For instance
if on the river you have nut low and one pair, but when another nut low (who has
no pair) bets, you raise and knock out a player who has you beat for high. There
is a lot to Omaha post-flop play, but it pales in comparison to Holdem.
Outplaying opponents is a cornerstone of Texas Holdem. Showing down the winning
hand is a cornerstone of Omaha Holdem.
Great players will often be able to identify exploitable situations where the
actual cards they hold mean very little. This can happen on rare occasions in
Omaha, but for the most part you simply can’t make silk out of a sow’s ear.
Crappy Omaha hands are crappy Omaha hands. Before the flop, if your hand is one
that normally does not have a solid positive expectation, you will seldom face
situations where that hand is transformed into a positive expectation one. In
contrast, KTo on the button in Holdem becomes a fine hand if everyone folds to
you. Weak Omaha hands very seldom suddenly become similarly “fine.”
Of course, in thinking about this topic, we need to compare apples to apples,
not apples to oranges. In a very weak, loose, passive Omaha game you should play
more hands than a Holdem game with tight, aggressive, excellent opponents. The
idea here is to compare parallel/similar type games.
The principal point however is not about how many starting hands to play
comparing one game to another. In itself, that is a nothingism. What you should
consider is that Holdem is a game of situational post-flop play, while Omaha is
a game of making showdownable, nut hands. Choose your starting hands
accordingly.
Myth: "You can’t bluff in Omaha."
Translation: "Bad players can’t bluff in Omaha." Bluffing and
semi-bluffing are very important parts of winning Omaha, even if rare. Suppose
you play in a game where the average pot is six big bets, $120 in a $10/20 game.
Now suppose you successfully bluff one of these pots a week. That is $6240 for a
year. Suppose you even win only one out of three of your bluff attempts. A
successful bluff one-third of the time once a week would earn you $4160 in a
year. That’s 208 big bets. For players attempting to win one big bet an hour,
that is profit for four hours a week for a year. The actual numbers aren’t
important, but this should illustrate that even rare successful bluffs can earn
you a significant amount of money.
Average Omaha players are trained to assume that bluffing in Omaha isn’t
possible (even if they do occasionally try). People who think bluffing is
impossible make good bluffing targets, but the more critical thing to keep in
mind is the nature of Omaha itself. Bluffing is difficult because complete, nut
hands happen easily. However, when a complete nut hand is difficult to make,
bluffing becomes easier against non-savvy opponents. Flops of QcQsJh or KcQc9c
are prime candidates for bluffing. Your opponent(s) may have something, but it
is easy for them to have very little -- very little, but still better than what
you hold. Small pots with coordinated flops are extremely bluffable from early
position. (The terrible players like to bluff from last position in Omaha.) Flop
bluffing won’t yield six big bets, but the ratios should be similar. One small
bet that earns four small bets is a very nice small bet.
Myth: "You can't
win with a set."
Translation: "I misplay flopped sets so I usually lose with
them, and lose the maximum when I do lose." Flopping a set (for example, you
hold KQQJ and the flop is QJ3) in Omaha is flopping a draw. That’s it. A draw.
One reason pocket pairs are weak in Omaha is because not only do you have to
spike your set card, you have to also pair the board -- unless of course you
drive enough opponents out of the pot so that you also pick up some of the
“blank” cards. Still, you continue to only be drawing, to either a full house or
to catch a blank. A draw is a draw. To put it mildly, there is no guarantee you
will make your draws. When you flop a set, you will often lose, but when you win
you will often scoop. Scooping the whole pot is the aim of the game. However,
there is a world of difference between flopping three Kings and flopping three
jacks... and a universe of difference between three Kings and three fives. QQQ
on the QJ3 flop should normally be played aggressively and viewed as a great
hand. 555 on an 875 flop should normally be folded without a second thought.
Checking and calling when you flop a set is usually suicide. Either bet
aggressively (or if you check, do it from strength, intending to raise the turn,
etc.) or probably fold. Sure, there will be some times checking and calling will
make sense, but those should be exceptions. Passively allowing everybody and
their brother to draw to every draw under the sun will lead to flopped sets
being shoveled into the muck as the pots are being pushed to gutshot straights
and backdoor flushes -- as well as half pots being pushed to garbage low hands.
Myth: "Aces never
win."
Here’s a companion to the above myth. Some players cuss that
they can’t win with pocket aces, as if aces should have some mystical powers.
Pocket aces are a two-card hand in a game where five card hands win. Other folks
think aces are nothing special, often not even part of a playable hand. Similar
to flopping a set, playing aces passively is the road to their doom. Aces tend
to dominate good Omaha hands, meaning Omaha hands with one ace in them. But aces
have a harder time dealing with situations where one or more random crapola
hands are added to the mix. In these cases it is easy for aces to take the worst
of it in the post-flop betting. While it is silly to generalize the same
behavior for AAJ9 with no suit and AA35 double-suited, aces are the prime
pre-flop raising hand in Omaha HiLo. If everybody plays or everybody folds,
that’s fine, but generally you would like to play against hands that are
normally very good hands (hands that call raises), but that happen to play
relatively poorly against aces. Raising before the flop (and reraising
especially) will make it more likely that you will face a single opponent or
opponents that is profitable for you to face.
Many of these myths are interrelated and self-perpetuating. Passive, weak play
leads to multi-way situations where most Omaha players end up befuddled. They
only have themselves to blame. If you don’t stick your tongue against a frozen
lamppost, it is unlikely your tongue will ever get stuck against a frozen
lamppost. Omaha players who invite trouble situations end up in trouble
situations, and then draw the wrong conclusions about the trouble. The “why” of
why they are in trouble is simply that they put themselves into the trouble.
It’s not that aces don’t win, or that sets don’t hold up, or that Omaha is a
complicated game. Playing poorly gets you in difficult trouble.
Approach the game properly and the myths soon evaporate. Embracing the
fundamentals of solid Omaha play leads to an uncomplicated, clear horizon, not
one shrouded in myths. Few Omaha players ever reach this point. Once you do,
then you can focus on the more subtle challenges of advanced play.
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