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Omaha relative hand strength and playing draws

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Sunday November, 22nd 2009 by fullhouse

Omaha will allow players to make incredibly strong hands on a consistent basis; the problem that players run into is not judging their hand’s relative strength. What does it mean for players to ignore their hand’s relative strength? In a nutshell it means that players are considering only what their hand is and are putting the hand in a vacuum. It is easier than you can imagine to get sucked into shoving your stack all in when you make top two pair in Omaha; the problem is that you will often be crushed. Sets, straights, flushes, and even full houses are flopped all the time in Omaha. Remember that your opponents are making extremely strong hands just as frequently as you are. If you are getting 3 bet and are holding a low straight you must give the other player credit for the nut straight from time to time. There are times where you will be playing loose players, but more often than not you will only be ahead by a narrow margin when playing a big pot in Omaha.

Flush draw? Sometimes it is the best you can hope for

In most poker games players will prefer to have a made hand before they invest a large portion of their stack. Omaha, however, will require players to risk all of their money when they are on a draw very frequently. Some players will bleed money when they play Omaha; part of the reason for this is probably their apprehensiveness. You have to be willing to risk it all if you want to be a profitable Omaha player.

If the board gives you a solid flush draw on the flop and it is not paired you will usually be in a great spot. You would of course want to have the nut draw because your opponent will sometimes be shoving with the same draw as you. So how do you know when your flush draw is good? Well the fact is that your flush draw will not be good most of the time that you get it in on the flop, the profitability lies in its potential. The best way to play a solid draw on the flop is to check raise your opponent. A check raise will allow the other player an opportunity to fold, and this would be great as your ultimate goal is to simply take down the pot. If they don’t fold you will be left with a ton of outs on the turn and river to overtake the other player’s holding. Some players wonder, then, why it is profitable to be all in when they are only on a draw. The profitably exists as a combination of the fold equity you gained by check raising the flop and all of the times that you will catch up on the turn or river. The simple truth is that you will only have a slight edge in these types of hands, usually around 5%, but that is just how Omaha is. If you are not ready to handle the swings and extreme risks in Omaha you should probably start off at lower limits until you can swallow the crazy nature of the game.