While I believe the best way to learn how to play Omaha is to start with the limit high-only version of the game, Omaha/8 is by far the more popular variation of limit Omaha. The two games share the same basic structure. There’s a small blind and a big blind and four rounds of betting with the size of the bets doubling on the latter two rounds. That’s where the similarities end.
In Omaha/8 half of the pot goes to the player holding the best high hand while the other half goes to the player who has made the best low hand. A hand qualifies for the low if it contains five cards that are 8 or lower without any of these cards being paired—hence the game’s official name eight-or-better high-low split. If three low cards do not appear on the board, a low hand can’t be made, and the entire pot gets awarded to the player holding the best high hand. For example, a low can be made if the board is Q-J-8-4-2. If the board is K-J-J-7-3, it cannot.
Omaha/8 is a great game for beginning players to learn because if you’re really patient and play by the rules, it’s hard to lose a lot of money playing it. Because it’s a split-pot game, weak players get punished less often than similarly weak players do in a game like hold’em. There’s less variance in Omaha/8. Unless you get incredibly lucky or unlucky, your chip stack usually won’t experience many wild fluctuations, so you don’t need as large of a bankroll as you would need in a game of hold’em. If you’re playing in a $10/$20 game of Omaha/8, you can usually get away with playing with a bankroll one-half, or possibly even one-third, the size of the bankroll you would need when playing $10/$20 hold’em. The only way you can lose a lot of money in Omaha/8 is if you start gambling and continually get “scooped,” losing both the high and the low. That, however, is really hard to do unless you’re trying to give your money away.
When I first started playing Omaha/8, I sat in the smallest games imaginable before I started moving up the ranks little by little—$3/$6, $10/$20, $15/$30, $20/$40. The game is really fun to play, but it’s also really hard to make a living at it. You get sucked into playing too many hands because there’s a split pot most of the time. You feel like you can’t lose, that the worst you can do is win half the pot. That’s why the game is so popular. There’s so much action in it. That’s also why it’s so dangerous. Omaha/8 is one of the toughest poker games you will ever learn. When I first started playing it, I never made any money from the game. In fact, playing that game probably cost me money.
Many poker players are scared to play Omaha/8 because they think there’s too much luck involved. It’s true that in loose low-limit games the edge highly skilled players enjoy over average players is fairly small, but highly skilled players have a huge edge over players who are new to the game or just plain bad at it. Regardless of who you choose to sit with, your goal should be to become one of these highly skilled players.
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Through the years I have learned one thing about Omaha/8, and that is if you want to be a consistent winner you have to play the game by the book. You can’t make many fancy moves and expect to outplay your opponents for the same reason you can’t get away with it in the high-only version of the game: you can never get anyone out. Your opponents are always going to call you down.
Here’s my basic strategy in a nutshell: play good starting cards, always go for the nuts, and try to scoop as many pots as possible. I’ll be discussing which starting hands are the best at length in the next chapter, but for now just know that you want to play cards that will give you the best chance of scooping the entire pot. Beginning players tend to fall in love with winning the low end of the pot and often lose sight of the importance of also winning the high half. In the long run this is a losing strategy.
There are certain cards you should seek to have in your starting hand and certain cards you should avoid at all costs. Ideally, you want to have an ace in your hand. Aces are the strongest cards in Omaha/8 because with them you can make the best low, the highest pair, the highest straight, and the highest flush. In addition to having an ace it’s good to have one or more small cards in your hand as this will give you the best chance of winning the low. A-2 is the most desirable two-card combination, A-3 the next.
After evaluating your starting hand’s chances of making the nut low, you need to consider its chances of making the high. Cards that can make a nut flush or nut straight are best. Hands that contain all high cards, with or without an ace, are also desirable because you can win the entire pot with them if three or more high cards (9 and above) come on the board, negating the possibility of someone making a low. The cards you want to avoid at all costs are the middle cards—8, 7, 6, 5—because the best you can ever do with them is win half the pot.
As in the limit high-only version of the game, deciding whether or not you want to play your starting hand is the most important decision you’ll face when playing Omaha/8. If you decide to play a hand that contains A-3, and three low cards come on the board but none of them is a deuce, there’s a very good chance you’re going to end up with the second best low on the river. A good rule of thumb is: always try to make the nut low. Never aim to make the second best low hand, also known as the “second nut low.” Obviously, the third nut low is even worse. If you want to discover this yourself the hard way, it’s going to cost you a lot of money. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve lost with the second nut low. I would make it and think to myself, “They can’t always have the nut low.” I would call, and some other player would show it to me every single time. Whatever the nut low is someone’s going to have it. While a player holding a hand that’s only fairly strong might win the high, the player who wins the low will almost always have the nuts because that’s what every player starts off shooting for.
You need to remember that before the flop those players hoping to make the low have a better chance of making their hands than players hoping to make the high. The low is always favored because there are more cards in the deck (excluding aces, which count both ways) that make the low (7) than there are that make the high (5). When there’s a possible low on board, you need to have a very strong hand to continue. If you don’t have the nut low, you should have a very strong high hand or a powerful draw like the nut flush draw with a four-card wrap.
I like playing hands that contain all high cards because they give me a chance to scoop the whole pot if three low cards don’t come on the board. I like these hands so much that I will call three bets before the flop with four high cards in my hand as long as there are at least four or five players involved. In this situation I have to think that most of my opponents are holding low cards, which gives my high cards a better chance of hitting the flop. If the flop brings two or more low cards, then it’s an easy fold for me. I won’t lose any more money with this hand. But if the flop brings two or more high cards, then I become a favorite to win the whole pot.
In Omaha/8 you should only continue past the flop if you have a very good chance of winning at least half the pot. If you’re an underdog both ways, you need to get out while it’s still cheap. This game is more about avoiding costly mistakes than it is about making great plays.
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One of the biggest mistakes an Omaha/8 player can make is chasing to make a split. Let’s say you’re drawing to make the nut low on the flop, and a high card falls on the turn. One player bets and another raises. You have to call two big bets with one card to come, and you have no chance of winning the high. This should be an easy fold. It’s not worth calling if winning half the pot is the best you can do. And yet I see players make this call all the time. If you’ve got the nut low draw and the flop brings two high cards, muck your hand. Don’t go for backdoors, especially heads-up, because the best you can do is split the pot, and there’s a good chance you could lose it all.
The other big mistake those new to the game make is overvaluing sets. Sets are even weaker in Omaha/8 than they are in the limit high-only version of the game. The only time you can play a set aggressively after the flop is if the flop brings all high cards and they’re fairly uncoordinated and there’s no flush draw possible, but that’s a fairly specific set of circumstances that isn’t going to occur very often. The problem with sets is that you may have the best hand on the flop, but as soon as the low hits you can only win half the pot, and your opponent could have a jelly roll to make a bigger high. He might have a wrap or a flush draw, and if he makes his draw he’s going to scoop the pot.
Let’s say the flop comes J-7-3 and you’ve got a pair of jacks in your hand. If one of your opponents has A-2 (which in Omaha/8 they invariably will), he’s going to call on the flop, hoping to make the nut low. If a low card falls on the turn, he’ll have half the pot locked up, and if he’s got any sort of redraw he’ll be free rolling to win the other half. Or the turn might give him the nut flush draw in which case he’s going to call again for sure.
From my own experiences at the tables I can tell you that whatever your opponent needs to catch to make his hand in Omaha/8 he’s going to catch. It seems to happen this way every time. If he needs to catch a low card to make the low and a club to make the high, he will inevitably catch a card like the 4 of clubs and scoop the pot, and you’ll be left wondering what the hell happened. Unless you’ve got a low draw or a redraw to make a flush, you need to play your hand very carefully even when you have top set.
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Maniacs drastically affect the dynamics of any table they’re sitting at. When there’s one at your table and you’re sitting on his right, you should play only the best starting hands because you know the maniac is going to raise before the flop nearly every single hand. If you bet, you have to expect a raise from the maniac and possibly a reraise from a player who is sitting behind him with a great hand. If you fold after putting in one bet, you’ve made a bad play, and if you call three bets with a mediocre hand, you’ve made an even worse one. So your best move would be to check. This way, you’ll be able to see how the maniac plays his hand and, more importantly, how the other players at the table respond to him. When the betting gets back to you, you can then decide how to play your hand. If several players call the maniac’s raise and you’ve got an excellent hand, you can then reraise the table. By playing your hand this way, you’re taking advantage of the maniac’s aggressiveness. Whenever you have a hand that’s favored to win at least half the pot or has the potential to scoop, you can use the maniac to help you build a monster pot before the flop.
When you’re sitting to the left of a maniac, you should be equally discriminating about which starting hands you’re going to play. If the maniac raises and you call with a mediocre hand, you’ve made another bad play because another player at the table could reraise. If a tight player sitting behind you makes it three bets, you’re going to be stuck in the worst of positions—between a Rock and a hard place, the “hard place” in this instance being the maniac. Once again you need to be playing only the best starting hands, and you need to always expect a reraise. This is a good position for beginning players to sit in because they will always get to see what the maniac does before it’s their turn to act.
You don’t need to spend as much time thinking about how to play against Rocks, but it is nice to have them on your right. Because such players are easy to read you will be able to make a good guess as to what cards they’re holding by simply observing how they bet each round. Another advantage to having these types of players on your right is that you’ll be able to see more flops for free when you’re in the blinds as they won’t be raising from the button as much as a maniac would. If a Rock is on your right and he opens for raise, you know he’s got a big hand, and you should fold all but the very best starting hands.
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While limit Omaha has been suffering a steady decline in popularity over the course of the last several decades, Omaha/8 has enjoyed an equally steady rise. The game can be found in every major online poker room as well as most card rooms in Las Vegas and Southern California. At the World Series of Poker three preliminary events now feature the game, and they always attract a healthy field. In 2006, 265 players entered the $5,000 Omaha/8 tournament, 352 entered the $3,000 tournament, and an amazing 670 players entered the $2,000 event.
To make the game more attractive to action players, some card rooms will add their own twists to the game’s basic structure. Some establishments in Las Vegas like to make it a “kill” game. In this version of the game anytime a player scoops a pot he gets the “kill button.” On the very next hand that player must post an extra blind, and the stakes jump to a higher level. In a $20/$40 half-kill game the player with the kill button would post $30, and the stakes would increase to $30/$60 for that one hand. In a full-kill game the player with the kill button would post $40, and the stakes would increase to $40/$80. The small and big blind continue to post the same amount as usual. In most games the player with the kill button acts in turn, although in some card rooms he gets to act last before the flop.
If you’ve picked up a nice-looking hand in a kill pot, you’re going to want to raise before the flop in order to put pressure on all the dead money sitting on the table, the two blinds and the kill button. The kill button is getting a discount to call, but he should take into account his position at the table before deciding whether or not to do so. For the small blind to call, he is going to need some very good cards. Not only will he be out of position for the entire hand, he also has not one but two players sitting behind him who may decide to raise or reraise before the flop.
Another variation of the game that’s enjoying tremendous growth is pot-limit Omaha/8, an exceedingly difficult game that combines the huge pots and dramatic swings commonly found in pot-limit Omaha with the tremendous patience and self-discipline required in Omaha/8. This game enjoys an avid following in the online poker world, especially among players who play for lower stakes.
These variations are intended to make the game more exciting, not necessarily more difficult. Omaha/8 is difficult enough as it is.