Basic Omaha Poker Strategy

If you’d like to expand your horizons and learn a new poker game, Omaha is probably the best place to start. It’s close enough to Texas Holdem that if you have experience as a Holdem player, a lot of your skills will translate over to Omaha.

But just because you have some Holdem skills it doesn’t mean you can jump right in to Omaha and think you’ll crush the games right away. Many high stakes Holdem players have made the same mistake and paid dearly for some harsh lessons. When you make the switch, you’re going to have to humble yourself and start from the beginning with basic Omaha poker strategy. But this time around it won’t take as long.

Omaha Hand Reading

Texas Holdem converts have to be especially careful in reading their Omaha hands because in Omaha, you have to use exactly two of your hole cards and three of the community cards to make your poker hand.

In Holdem, you were able to use one, two or none of your hole cards in combination with the community cards to make your hand. If your mind has been trained in that way, you’ll find it difficult to un-train your mind. For example:

In Texas Holdem, if you have one spade in your hand and there are four spades on the board, you would have a flush. If you had only one spade in your hand in Omaha and there were four spades on the board, you would NOT have a flush. The problem is that you have to use exactly two of your hole cards. So in the Omaha hand, you would end up using that one spade, plus another non-spade card from your hand and three community cards. No flush.

Recommended Omaha Poker Site:

Omaha Starting Hands

Each player gets four cards to choose from, which means each player can have up to six different hands. There’s a lot of competition out there so you have to be very selective in choosing your Omaha starting hands.

The best Omaha hands are the ones that work together no matter how you arrange them. For example, the hand AAKK is strong no matter which two cards you pick. A hand like AK29 only has one powerful hand (AK) but the rest are trash, which means this hand is trash.

Some of the top Omaha hands include:

AAKK

AATJ

AAQQ

AAJJ

AATT

AA99

JT98

KKQQ

KKJJ

KQJT

These hands become even better when they are double-suited. Double-suited means they are hands in which the two highest cards share suits with the two lowest cards. For example, if the hand AAKK consisted of an Ace of diamonds, Ace of hearts, King of diamonds, King of hearts, it would be considered double-suited.

You’ll also want to keep in mind that there’s not as much of a gap between good premium starting hands and other hands in Omaha. For example, a pair of Aces in Holdem will win more than 80% of the time against a single opponent but AA isn’t nearly as powerful in Omaha. As a result, you’ll see many more players enter the pot in Omaha than in Holdem.

The strategic adjustment for that is to draw a distinct line in your mind between preflop play and postflop play in Omaha. You can still make preflop raises with your strong hands but you can’t expect that preflop power to carry over to the flop every time. You’ll need help from the flop to win the hand no matter what you start with.

More about Omaha starting hands here.

Play for the Nuts

Hand values go way down in Omaha compared to Holdem because each player has so many cards to choose from. You can’t call an all-in bet on the river with the middle set in Omaha like you can in Texas Holdem. Well, I guess you can but you shouldn’t unless you have a good reason to do so.

In low limit Omaha games, you shouldn’t call big bets on the river unless you have the nuts or very close to it. In full ring games, someone almost always has the best possible hand at any time. Be patient and wait until you have a super strong hand before you get involved. Even hands like the bottom full house are easily beaten in Omaha.

Bluff Less in Omaha

There’s a lot less bluffing in Omaha than in Texas Holdem. You’ll have to play a more straightforward game because there are so many cards out there. People call more often in Omaha because they either have the hand you’re representing or they have a powerful draw.

Draws Are Bigger in Omaha

Draws are a lot more powerful in Omaha than in Texas Holdem. If you thought a 9 out flush draw was great in Holdem, wait til you get a 20 out wrap in Omaha. Here’s an example:

You hold 6-8-T-J on a 7-9-Q board.

Your outs are:

Four 5s

Three 6s

Three 8s

Three Tens

Three Jacks

Four Kings

Some draws in Omaha have so many outs that it’s more likely for them to hit than to miss. It’s tough to recognize these draws at first but as you get used to the game, identifying them will become second nature.