My Omaha Hi/Lo strategy articles are up.

Critique please.

Part 1 (basic rules)

Part 2 (starting hands)

Part 3 (postflop)

It gives a good overview of the difference between HoldEm and Omaha. It gives a reasonable idea as to the general requirements for playable hands, and well emphasises the strategies which are important.

One thing to possibly emphasise more is the potential for scooping the pot, and how much of a difference there is between scooping and splitting.

I think it's a great starters guide - I just hope that not too many people start reading them and tightening up the Paradise and Pacific tables I tend to play on... although on my site I've got some card game tips which recommend Omaha Hi/Lo as the game to play for relatively easy wins with simple strategies like this.

One thing I've found with the ultra-loose tables is that you actually need more reading skills in some ways than may be the case in tighter pots. It helps if you can figure whether someone is playing for the high or low end of a pot, and also whether they have a nut straight or flush, as you may often find multiple people hoping to win with a flush, so figuring if you have the better flush when it's not the nut flush is handy.

Just the first paragraph is enough to inspire me to print the article off and give it a study. The obvious thing to do would be to have a site Omaha tournament (low stakes!!!) so members can give it a try without getting burnt (I mentioned the possibility of some sort of HORSE series between members to give people incentive to look into new games).

If that really is all your own work (LOL) then it's an amazing effort (all bets are off for poster of the month). It's just a shame it's so hidden away and unpublicised (Nick/Dave!!!).

This is a superb piece for anyone interested in omaha.Dorkus,you should send this to one of the poker mags as it is the best written and informative article i've read about the game.I play omaha a couple of times a week and my game has just improved by 200% after reading this.Nice work fella

This is really good stuff. I had the opportunity to read it before it was posted and I was impressed. Haven't given Omaha a go yet but I'm getting closer to making the leap. Someone suggested we hold a cheap Omaha event and I think this would be a great idea to test out the strategies presented...

Thanks for the replies.

Good point. I took this as almost obvious when writing the article ("of course scooping is good, duh!"), but there are some more advanced concepts such as figuring out pot odds in O8 which relate to scooping/splitting chances, which I overlooked.

I wonder how mad Nick will be at me if I update it again (the first version had a really rather stupid error ^^). Or part IV perhaps? We'll see.

I doubt the fish on Pacific and Dise know that poker guides even exist.

I've always wanted to use "WPT-philia".

...and yeah, An O or O8 tourney would be fun. We could always set up a table on poker.com ourselves if the powers that be are not cooperative though (and I'm not sure what the demand would be like, so maybe they'd be justified in telling us to take a hike).

Well Dorkus just had my first ohama h/l session, tried pokerstars play sit&go's first and it was unplayable, all in fest (to be expected) so i sat at a micro PL game with €2. Played for about 45 mins and built up to about €6. Good fun but a mis-read cost me all my profit LOL, and a lesson.

I for one would be very interested in maybe a poker.com game (for a small buy in) so you can look at our play. I know it will take a while to learn to play the game correctly, but it seemed that nearly everyone called every bet as far as the river. I flopped a house in one hand and felt that (unlike holdem) slowplaying wasnt really an option because the more i bet the more i got paid.

Anyway thanks for your efforts Dorkus they are much appreciated and a 4th article would also be much appreciated in the future.

BTW i might even challenge you to a small buy in heads up game in the near future (even if it is to discuss some of the hand histories on the site)

I'd be in for a cheap buy-in maybe a buck...

Nice, shame about you donking off your profit.

One thing, the articles don't really relate to tournaments. Much like tournament Hold 'Em is different to ring game Hold 'Em, tournament and limit O8 are different too - playing too few hands will doom you as the blinds go up, so you need to either loosen up later on or try and accumulate chips early on. Building a stack early on in a low buyin game can be tricky as people wh don't know what they're doing will call and bet with crap.

I recommend sticking to the ring games before going into O/O8 tournaments for most people.

Edit: Wow, this came out ugly. ^^

[00:00] <Qhr1s0> only thing is, poker.com only does omaha hi
[00:01] <Qhr1s0> i'm pretty sure i could adapt to it, but the fact remains i've only played 2 or 3 games of omaha hi in my life
[00:01] <IDave> ahh, still good place to learn/practice
[00:01] <Qhr1s0> yeah, would be good for me to learn too
[00:01] <Qhr1s0> i just prefer h/l because it's less swingy

hey Dave, dorkus, 10bob lets get a game of O8/b going I for one play mostly O8/b so if you all can put something together let me know, small buyin maybe say 1-5 I'd be happy to play eh rob you to, I know that poker.com has no 8/b games yet but I asked and they said it will be coming so if you all can get a private table at another site lets do it.





Edit: maybe pokerstars or titan if titan has private tables

I think for a lot of us here it's pretty obvious that scooping's better than splitting, but it's something that you don't necessarily realise how significant it is until you look at the maths of it.
If you take an example of 3 players competing for a pot, and you split, then you get 1 1/2x your stake, and make a profit of 1/2x your stake. If you scoop the pot, thne you get 3x your stake, for a profit of 2x your stake - 4 times as profitable as splitting, so while at first glance scooping may look twice as good as splitting, it's much more than that generally. This is the kind of thing I was suggesting putting in, because the level of difference isn't so immediately obvious.

good stuff dorkus. been profitable so far, though i've just been playing .5/.10 to practice, so i'm only up maybe five bucks, but still, it's a good game that i don't think i would have gotten into otherwise. amazing how poorly a lot of people play it. only come across one or two players who seem to know what they're doing

-n