Online poker players have discovered Omaha as an alternative to Texas Hold ‘em.  As it uses the same basic betting and play rotation, the main differences between the Omaha and Texas Hold ‘Em are purely strategic and require players to learn an entirely different way of thinking.  In Omaha, players receive four hole cards rather than just two as in Texas Holdem.  When playing in the showdown, you must use exactly two cards from your four and three cards from the community cards to create a hand.  This means that even if you had four aces, you could only use two of them as part of your final hand.

Having four hole cards makes a huge difference in your preflop betting because it’s no longer just about having pocket rockets or KA suited; there’s other things to be considered.  We’re going to talk about two hands to review the difference.

HAND ONE: AsAh2d7s

You might be tempted to go “Pocket ROckets!  Yes!”  We wouldn’t blame you, but you have to look at the whole hand to really get an idea of how it can be played.  The 2 and 7 are offsuit and you can’t make a straight, which means you are vulnerable to straights, flushes, and two pair coming from your opponents’ hands.

HAND TWO: 9s10hJsQh

This is a fantastic starting hand in Omaha.  Your cards are all close in rank and they’re double suited (you only have two suits on display.)  You can hit the flop in many ways, making straights or flushes using the cards in your hand and the community cards on the deck.  The way to look at this kind of hand is that you have 6 ‘Holdem’ hands working for you, 9-10, 9-J, 9-Q, 10-J, 10-Q and J-Q. With the aces hand you really only have A-A as the other combinations are unlikely to help you after the flop.

Starting hand selection is important in Omaha poker because of the fact that everyone has multiple ways of hitting each flop. A good way for a beginner to think of this is that each opponent has up to 6 Holdem hands! In a multi-way pot on the flop the chances that at least one opponent has hit the flop hard enough to call a bet is high. Your hands should include cards that work together in different formats. Suited aces (and ace with a second card of the same suit), pairs and cards close in rank can all be played.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Poker Hands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.