"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. (Look here for a bit on playing aces in Pot Limit Omaha High.)

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.