Omaha vs. Hold 'Em: Which is more a game of skill?

I have read some books that say Omaha is more a game of skill than Hold 'Em, because it is more complex, and Omaha Hi-Lo even more so. I have read other books that say Omaha is more of a gambling game, and Hi-Lo might as well be craps, because there's no such thing as a good hand until you see the river.

If we define skill as the game where the best players are more likely to win, which one do you think is more a game of skill?

well over the long run good omaha players will win at a higher win rate than holdem players. omaha8 is a game for droolers

omaha is by far the game the requires the most skill but it also has the highest variance

I'm a big fan of both games although I have only started to play Omaha recently.

There is a lot of skill involved in both but from what I hear, Omaha requires more skill.

I have to say I am not a fan of Omaha8 at all.

Tried a freeroll and because of all of my holdem play, I never managed to notice or properly understand the pot getting split into Hi and Lo.

Wow, I would think that omaha involves a lot more gambling and therefore may not require as much skill. It seems to me you get more people seeing flops and mixing it up with four hole cards. I love both games, but I limit my play in omaha because of the huge swings that you can take.

What do you mean by variance? Do you mean variance as in sometimes getting out right away, and then winning another game? Or do you mean there are more ways to deviate away from how other people play and have your own, distinct style?

Same here! I've tried several freerolls as well.

I think that the term skill needs to be defined.

Exactly what is it?

tc,

mange

More that in omaha the edges are much smaller. There are no preflop 80/20s (more like 60/40s) and you can have way more outs vs strong hands since you can hit really big draws. H/L is even worse since you can have low draws as well.

I voted for Omaha because right now it is more beatable than Texas Holdem. I am talking about ring games. Omaha does have a higher variance, meaning you will take harder swings, and you need to be prepared for that. Omaha is simply more profitable right now because you will be playing with people that make big mistakes because they are playing wrong or don't understand big differences. Just one quick example is that when the board is tripped up (I.E. a flop of 7 7 7) you need a pocket pair to have a full house. Some people don't understand those things at first and you can make big money off them.

I personally have a higher win rate in PLO than in hold em because the luck factor is lower in PLO and I have a more developed understanding of PLO than NLHE Hold em.

They all demand different skills. Therefore the question is moot, I had to say they are all same, but they are not. Hard to compare apples and oranges.

Makwa hit the nail on the head. Like forest gump says "peas and carrOTs". They all require their own unique skill set. I won an Omaha Tournament on Pitbull today, and it was easy money, but i've also played on Omaha tables where i was tested as much as on any hold em table. If you mix it up with most modern day omaha players, it's like fish in a barrell, but if you get into someone who's been around a bit, you're in for a fight.

Stud games no question about it require more skilll...holdem does require mental skill but at times is just one big lottery, hoping for the right cards to come out.

Hold'em, right now, requires more skill because the playing public is more familiar with the game. The average hold'em player plays somewhat decently. However, the average PLO/PLO8/Razz/Stud8/StudHi/Whatever player tends to have little clue what they're doing. So obviously, it would take more skill to beat the better (on average) opponents.

I'd also want to say that win-rate doesn't have any effect on it. In fact, wouldn't it take more skill to win at a game where your edge is very small? Often in a game like Stud Hi, the variance is large, and you have to play near-perfect poker to beat the rake at decent stakes. Unlike hold'em, you do not get clear feedback on whether your play is good or not, so it requires a lot of study & analyzing to figure out if you're playing well.

That said, I voted equal skill in the poll.

While I believe that Omaha requires more skill, the average NLHE player is going to be more skillful than the average Omaha player. If for no other reason than most people understand the odds, percentages, and position plays of NLHE, but not in Omaha.

I think the game of holdem is more skill, because you get only two cards and a combination of tactics, luck, patience and concentration can make you a good player.

So I think that holdem is a game of more skills.

the euro rounders text would fit perfectly here

i concur
http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=3569538&page=0&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=1

EuroRounders

Michel (voiceover): "If you can't find the boorish
American hold'em player at the table within half an
hour, you are the boorish American hold'em player."

-----

TITLE/CREDITS. This entire movie is in black and
white, with subtitles.

-----

Michel (voiceover): "This game is really scummy, and
well above what I can afford to play. My entire
bankroll is riding on this one session going well.
This is Teddy CIA's place, where they only play Pot
Limit Omaha, the most sophisticated game in Europe."

- Michel knocks on the window -

Teddy CIA: "You want poker, or whore?"

Michel: "Poker. Give me three stacks of high, elitist
society."

-----

Michel: "I raise."

Teddy CIA: "It's a position raise. I call."

- The flop comes 5-7-A, with two diamonds -

Michel: "I bet the pot."

Teddy CIA: "I raise the pot."

Michel: "I reraise the pot."

Teddy CIA: "I reraise the pot."

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel (voiceover): "I sit back and think. I have
three aces - the best possible hand. I want him to
think I'm debating a call, but really I'm just
thinking about Monte Carlo, and whatever the
[censored] is in Monte Carlo."

Michel: *shrugs* "Okay, well, I re-pot it, I'm all in,
because I don't think you have a pair." *winks at the
camera*

Teddy CIA: "Who are you winking at? It doesn't matter,
I call."

Michel (voiceover): "I know before he even says it."

Teddy CIA: "I have 8-6-4-3 with two diamonds, for a
wrap straight draw and a flush draw, which is a
favorite over your top set."

- Turn is a King. River is a 2 which gives Teddy CIA
an ace-to-five straight for the win. -

- Michel sits there, shell-shocked. -

Joey Croissant: "Come on, I'll get you a whore."

-----

Michel (voiceover): "Well, that sucked. Since then,
I've sworn off of poker and made my living as a
roadside prostitute for boorish American tourists.
Hopefully, I can pay my way through law school that
way. I can always find games, though. I could turn
this truck onto the road and be at the Taj in 19 and a
half hours."

-----

Michel (voiceover): "I'm here to pick my friend Worm
up from prison."

- Worm walks out of prison -

Michel: "Worm! It's wonderful to see you!"

- They kiss each other passionately on the mouth -

Michel: "How was prison?"

Worm: "I was brutally sodomized on a regular basis."

-----

Michel: "Look...Croissant, I never told you this, but
about a year ago, I was playing poker at the Casino
des Atlantes, and Marcel Luske walks in. He sits down
at the 50/100 pot limit game. And, I mean, the whole
place stops, right? Just watching this guy play. After
a while there isn't a retarded European gambling game
going, because everybody's just, you know, watching
this guy."

- Joey Croissant nods -

Michel: "So you know what I did? I sat down."

Joey Croissant: "No way, you need at least 300,000
euros to sit down at a game like that. Such bad
financial management is typical of a boorish
American!"

- Joey Croissant and Michel laugh for twenty-six
minutes -

Michel: "Right, okay, but seriously, I played for an
hour, doing nothing but folding. Then I won a huge
pot."

Joey Croissant: "Aces? Kings? Ace-King doublesuited?
Suited aces? High connectors? Middle doublesuited
connectors? Two big pair?"

Michel: "Rags."

Joey Croissant: "That's probably fine too, you're only
like a 48/52 dog."

Michel: "I raised. And he came over the top of me,
like I was a boorish American. I re-popped it. He
potted it again. I think for like two seconds and then
I re-pot it."

Joey Croissant: "Jesus [censored] Christ, how much
money did you have?"

Michel: "After I bet I would quietly slide my chips
back toward my stack, nobody noticed. Anyway, he
thinks for a while, looks at me, checks his cards
again, and he mucks. I take it down. And then he looks
at me and says, 'I have to know. Did you have it?' And
I said, 'I'm sorry Marcel, I can't remember.'"

Joey Croissant: "Face!"

Michel: "I know, totally. Anyway, based on that one
hand, I felt confident gambling for all the money I
had, at one time."

-----

Law Professor: "I am a Jew."

Michel: "I hate you."

-----

Teddy CIA: "We play, heads up, Pot Limit Omaha, 25 and
50 blinds, until one of us has it all?"

Michel: "Out of sheer curiosity, you realize you're
giving up like boat loads of equity by agreeing to
gamble for money that's effectively yours anyway,
right? That you could just not let me play, and then
kill me and take what I have?"

Teddy CIA: "I know, but I am a boorish American!"

- Michel and Teddy CIA laugh for seventy-two minutes -

-----

Michel (voiceover): "I pick up Ace-Ace-Jack-Ten
doublesuited."

Michel: "I raise the pot."

Teddy CIA: "Very aggressive. But, I reraise the pot."

Michael (voiceover): "He's representing
Ace-Ace-King-King doublesuited, the only hand better
than mine. I can't call, and give him a chance to
catch. I can only fold...if I believe him."

Michel: "I reraise, I'm all in."

Teddy CIA: "Take it down."

-----

- The flop reads 10-9-5, with two spades -

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel: "Pot."

Teddy CIA: "Pot."

Michel: "Pot. I'm all in."

Teddy CIA: "Alright, I call. What do you have?"

Michel: "Jack high flush draw and middle set."

Teddy CIA: "Wrap, with a king high flush draw."

Michel: "Boy, I sure hope my 5:4 edge holds up,
otherwise I am going to die."

- Turn is an off-suit 5, giving Michel an unbeatable
hand. But the river is the ace of spades anyway,
because it's always the [censored] ace of spades. -

Teddy CIA: "He beat me. Pay that man his money. His
silly, silly-looking European money."

-----

Cab Driver: "Where are you off to?"

Michel: "Monte Carlo."

Cab Driver: "Good luck."

Michel: "Shut the [censored] up."

I think Omaha requires more skill and understanding of the percentages due to so many possible hands with having the extra cards.

LOL Eurorounders is so hilarious, I lol so hard every time I read this part:


Joey Croissant: "Aces? Kings? Ace-King doublesuited?
Suited aces? High connectors? Middle doublesuited
connectors? Two big pair?"

Michel: "Rags."

Joey Croissant: "That's probably fine too, you're only
like a 48/52 dog."




As for the question, unless you're playing at really high limits or else HU I think Hold 'em has a lot more skill. I've heard that even up to 25/50 and higher basically Omaha is mostly about making the nuts and that bluffs are basically extremely rare. In Hold 'em, even if you're playing 25c/50c you're going to have a lot of people running multi-street bluffs, semi-bluffs, calling you down (correctly) with bottom pair type hands. Basically I guess the reason is because HE players are generally better because they've been playing it longer. But the bigger aspect is just all the hand combinations. For example if you had a 50-handed game of hold 'em, you couldn't really bluff you just wait for the nuts. When everyone has 6 combinations of hole cards then even 6-handed it's like having 36 hold 'em hands in play. You just can't run many bluffs because the likelihood of someone having a hand that is close to the nuts or is a strong enough draw to the nuts is just way too likely. Like I said I think HU Omaha players probably have to be more skilled than HU HE players because there is that bluffing aspect as well as hand-reading with all the different combinations. But when it comes to typical ring play I'm gonna go with hold 'em as being the game that requires the most skill to play.

Wow so far even distribution of the voting, each has ~ 25% . Obviously all three games are different and require different skill and play. I think it just depends on what you like to play. I seem to be a much better omaha hi lo player than holdem, but I feel thats because I feel some people don't really know how to play hi lo. It's weird because how often will you fold trips in holdem? Most of the time you would say never, unless the board is a four flush. Meanwhile, in omaha I find myself constantly throwing away trips / top two pair as they never seem to hold up. If I have a straight someone has a flush. If I have a flush someone has a boat. If I have a boat someone has a better boat. That always seems to be the case, thus I am used to throwing away quality hands in omaha which you would never see me toss in hold em. To each his own I guess.

OMAHA imo

lot of donks in holdem

push 44 pre and beat AA if u flop sets

lmao

Omaha H/L 8 is more complex and therefore requires more skill. How about when you think you have the nut low and presto- you don't! You scratch your head and wonder why you didn't win the "low", and then finally you say "oh, right"! Or how about when you have three of a kind and think you have a full house! It has happened to me a few times even though I know you have to use 2 cards from your hand..I guess you subconsciously want to make the best hand possible from all the cards showing.

I read this a lot, but it's wrong. Any reputable text will verify that, when played correctly, variance in Omaha is about 50% that of Hold Em.

I'm voting O8, simply because learning to play it well yields better and more predictable profits with less variance. But your decisions are pretty cut-and-dry, especially pre-flop. So it's not really so much "skill" as it is knowledge and discipline. Hold Em does give the skilled player more opportunity to be creative and make "something out of nothing." There are more suckouts in Hold Em. It might seem there are more in Omaha, but since the draws are often more profitable and predictable, they are not really suckouts.

If you're getting a lot of suckouts and variance at Omaha, you're just not playing very well.

You want to play at tables with a high flop percentage and loose drawers, but played correctly O8 is tighter than HE. It's pretty hard to even play O8 too tight. It's a real grind and not really the most fun. Long dry spells. But the best money maker.

There is no question whatsoever that Omaha is more complex than Hold'em, H/L even moreso. However, as Gary points out above, there is not necessarily more skill involved, for the reasons he cites.

That last part, had to be from a Hold'em book, probably written by some punk who tried Omaha once and didn't get the hang of it, because he was applying certain Hold'em strategies that don't work so well in Omaha. It is utter ignorance to think Omaha is more of a 'gambling game'. Yes, Omaha is more of a drawing game. But you still have to understand the odds of hitting draws with the cards you have to work with.

And as Gary also mentions, the odds of your draws hitting are predictable. Sure, you can sometimes get screwed by the river. But once one learns the difference between a naked A2 and A23 starting hand (A2 = 30 of 48 (over 60%) outs either will hit and screw you), they will understand what is a good starting hand that will take you to the river. The complexity of Omaha, especially H/L includes awareness of a multitude of possibilities and factors too numerous to mention - including, but not limited to counterfeit protection (i.e. A23) and freerolling (meaning your hand can probably only get better, i.e. having nut straight but also flush draw - or flush with top set in case the board pairs up), and the concept of 'wraps' (straights).

So bottom line, in terms of 'skill', it's comparing apples & oranges. While there is bluffing in Omaha (usually semi-) and positional considerations etc, there seems to be more 'nuances' in Hold'em with regard to bluffing, aggression, and reads on your opponents - certainly skills, and IMHO, harder to learn. So your question is tough to answer. If we define skill (as you say) as the game where the best players are more likely to win, I'd still have to pick Omaha, simply because the playing field is much worse, especially at the lowest levels.

Omaha and omaha 8 both do require more insight into the game and therefore more skill than holdem..., and as far as the gambling part is concerned..., you got to know WHEN to bet..., which involves skill again...
Love them all...
GL
aC

If the criteria for skill was that the game was more complex, Calvinball would be the game that required the most skill.

You talked about O8 later and I'm not sure if you mean O8 or just Hi here, but Omaha Hi is far higher variance while you're right O8 has far lower variance than HE. Especially against bad players, typically in O8 if an opponent sucks out they'll only suck out for half the pot. It's a pretty good game when worst case scenario you get your money back and best case you take their stack. In O8 however, there's one pot and 60-40 is considered a huge edge. Good players are pushing a lot of small edges like getting their money in with 55-60% equity and that's the equation for huge variance. In Hold 'em the huge edges are around 80% and it's not uncommon to be able to get an opponent in drawing dead. That very rarely happens in PLO Hi.

one word;

"Pot Control"

Agreed. I was talking O8. I do well in that game but just can't crack Omaha Hi.

I would say Omaha hi-lo is the highest game of skill with these 3. Then Texas HOldem and then omaha hi. Omaha, the best hand is AAKK double suited. A 279Q os, can easily beat that, chances are no A or K will come and chances are 27q9 will probably make 2 pair or better. Omaha hi-lo has to be a lot of skill since hands vary and it is way more complicated. Texas holdem has a lot of skill involved too, since you watch the pros place and place in the money over and over again. This shows poker is not all about luck and skill is definately a factor.

My oppinion is that Omaha Hi Lo is the more complicated game. There are so many facets of the game that require a lots of playing to become a survivor in the game.

Too many to mention here.

There are several basic rules that should be followed in hi lo, or losing is assured.

Read some articles on the game and play lots of hands.

I have played thousands of hands in play money and real money. For years. And, still do not believe I am a good Hi Lo player.

And, if you get impatient, you are sure to lose in the long run.

There are so many pitfalls in hi lo. One can lose money while winning the pot. haha. (Quartered) Happened many times.

Good Luck,

mange

OMAHA by very far... Only down side when i play in cash games is the variance of hands. But... Play enough hands and that skill part your referring to will develop quickly. You will find yourself auto folding str8 or some kind of draws when the boards already paired. Things like that. I love omaha..Best game by far over holdem or ne other game IMO