Omaha Poker: Two Tips For Smart Beginners

by Dougie Goguen | Feb 22 2012

Understanding the give and take of hand selection in Omaha poker is critical for players looking to play the game for profit.

Understand How Patient You Need To Be
Just like any other poker game, players new to Omaha poker need to start by playing a conservative, tight-aggressive style. The thing is, Omaha much more room for error when you're playing less-than-terrific hands.  In Hold'em, there are 169 different hand combinations. If you play a conservative game in Hold'em and stick to only be playing the top 10 hands, you'll only be playing around one in ten hands.

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You might think that Omaha, with over 16,000 hand permutations, has an equivalent increase in the numbers of premium hands. Turns out, there are only 30. However that can be built out. Each of these starting hands can be double-suited, single-suited or rainbow. This gives you as a conservative player 90 acceptable starting hands. These 90 starting hands make up a mere 0.5% of all possible hands dealt to you. If you only play premium hands, you will play one hand out of every 200 you're dealt.

This means you're going to have to play more to make playing Omaha worth your while. The good thing is that Omaha offers a lot more opportunities for straights and flushes, which means that you can play messier hands and still win big.

That Said, Don't Get Tempted
While Texas Hold 'Em has a few premium hands that look great but are actually sort of awful (like K10, for example,) Omaha offers up literally hundreds of hands that look great but have little value to a newer poker player. An advanced, skilled poker player can play any hand in the correct situation to turn a profit. As a beginner, though, you will make too many mistakes with weak holdings to play them profitably.

If you have Hold'em experience you might fall into the common trap of overplaying low suited connectors, especially if you have four in a row. Have no illusions - hands such as 4567, double-suited or not, are not strong ones for a beginner to be playing.

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We've repeated it dozens of times, but it's always worth including: Omaha is a game of the nuts. If you make a six-high flush, chances are you're going to lose your stack to somebody holding a Queen-high flush. Hands like this need to make the nut straight, with no pair or possible flush. The odds of all of those factors falling into place at once are too slim to make the hand profitable and you should definitely be OK with folding.

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