Why would anyone play holdem?

In the last few weeks I have been getting back to my most profitable game: omaha hi/lo. I have so far made about $150, by playing a few hours a day at very low limits.

I used to run some holdem tables alongside my omaha tables, but after seeing that the win rate of Omaha is much higher, I see no need for them anymore.

Why would anyone play holdem when there are other games like omaha and 7-card stud where you can just make a killing compared to holdem? I think I could make a living playing just those two games at .25/.50 (Maybe averaging about 0.3-0.5 buy-ins per hour).

Because Holdem is the game they see on TV. I enjoy Omaha myself. But on my trip to a casino this weekend, I played 1-2 NLHE for about 12 hours, waiting for a 1-2 PLO game to open up. It never did sadly.

I agree with rath I got interested watching TV. I like the other games but holdem has the popularity with tournments goers.

It's really 'your win rate'. Someone is winning at holdem. You are losing. And vice versa. When you win at Omaha, someone else loses. So it's probably more of a case where your Omaha skills are better than holdem, for which I give you credit, I think it's a more complicated game, and many people make many mistakes. That said, I prefer Omaha too, H or HL. For me, it's simply not as boring. And I think I do better at it too.

i think its kinda silly when people are like "well i made $40 and tripled my roll playing razz its the best thing ever lolbot". its like yeah ok, i've made a lot more than that playing NLHE, because i'm actually good at that game, rather than circumstantially profitable

so what you're saying is that although i make money playing hold em i should quit and move to a different game?

seriously though people are good at different things if hold em is one of them they should play that game

What I really meant that the level of play is nowhere near the level of hold em. And I didn't say that I was good at Omaha

All you have to do is be tight and wait for the nuts (or something close) and then get paid. I still have a few problems with my game as I sometimes get too loose when I should be waiting for better opportunities.

Once I get that handled it will be like a ATM sitting in my room, but please don't tell anyone

I also really enjoy playing omaha and 7-card, especially the hi-lo games. However, you don't find near as many games in those types as you do hold 'em. Plus I will always enjoy the popularity of hold 'em as something a great many of the friends I already enjoy as well as the ones I meet are already into. The love of the game as a common interest is always a benefit to me.

mainly because I have no understanding of strategy for omaha and stud which means my money is funding people like you at those games!

G

I like omaha H/L and Razz , but my biggest wins have definitely come in holdem. You really can't compare different games with each other.

Hold Em'... survival for climbing the pay ladder is my style. Omaha is too slow, very little action / fast eliminations since limits are involved. I also despise cash games... hate them soooo much because bad plays get rewarded.

Huh? how are bad players rewarded at ring? The stacks are deeper and the action isnt forced,therefore benefiting skillfull players.
Can u please explain?

I agree in the probability that mabe it is just that you have skills you never knew about in Omaha rather than Holdem, and koodos to you as well.

I prefer tournaments where I only have to play a few hands to have a decent enough stack to finish itm. In a cash you'd be sucked into playing more hands... sure it rewards skill.. but it's just bad play imo. I guess I am not used to playing post flop

Hourly rate drives me to hold'em. I can make more $/Hour playing 25NL than I can playing 5/10 Razz. Lack of games and smaller player pools with a higher % of good players make Razz a pretty unattractive option.

in cash games you literally can wait forever for a big hand because the blinds don't rise and force action

also it favors skillfull deepstack and good post flop players

mush more skill involved in cash games imo

0.5 buy-ins = $25, $25/hour at 40 hours/week and 50 weeks/year = $50k/year. Not particularly great, plus no benefits, sick/vacation days, lunch breaks, down time, social time, etc. So even a regular job at $50k/year would be better.

fwiw I believe I could currently make more than that at NLHE (I mean hourly, not yearly, don't think I could put in 40 hours/week at any card game yet), plus get more in the form of fpps. So yeah, that's why I play NLHE.

I would like to know also, sindri is making a good point here.....

Also flint, you say it is easier to win money since many people do't know what they are doing since they are rare games, but tbh you'd be suprised at how many people online have no idea what they are doing when you'r playing them!

It's not that ring requires more or less skill than tourneys, it's that ring play requires different skills.

true of course but i find it was hard for me to adjust from tourneys to cash games

but yeah you're right different skills but both challenging

I play Hold'Em because I know how to play it, and coincidently, most other people don't. They see poker on TV and think they can do it too, without realizing how challenging the game actually is. As a result, I make money. =)

As Willie Sutton the bank robber said when asked why he robbed banks, 'because that's where the money is'."

I think the farther you go from the mainstream, the bigger disparity in player skill.

Everybody and his brother knows the basics of Hold'em. And although there are good players and bad players, I think the average HE player has a firm grasp of the game, and knows some basic strategy.

Shift to Omaha or Stud, and now you've got a lot of people who have a more vague understanding of the strategy. Head to a 2-7 triple-draw table, and you will find players who raise preflop, then discard 4 cards.

Myself I look for good games and situations, not necessarily the type of game. A soft stud game beats a tuff NLHE game, etc... I have heard here and there that stud and omaha can be better moneymakers overall than HE, but Ithink it depends on the player, their strengths and weaknesses, style of play.

I like stud and stud hi lo, for instance, because you can see a ton of cards and make decisions based on what you see and what was folded (if you don't track cards then forget it); Omaha and OHL are more waiting games, waiting for the right cards and potential draws (usually the nuts).

I learn and play them all, but I watch out for the HE specialists, they are a growing crew, and can clean your clock if you are not an expert, and don't see them coming.

Also, I agree with Vic entirely. I love watching people 'learn' to play Draw, Razz, and Omaha without a firm grasp of the basics, or even starting hands. These are often people drawn to poker by holdem on TV and the net, who want to try their 'luck' at something else when they get tired or beat at holdem. He he he.

After writing that yesterday, I tilted so bad on Titan poker that I lost almost 60 dollars of that hard earned money by spewing. I was tilting so bad, when I should have just been waiting patiently for good hands and making money. I guess its another expensive lesson that I learnt.

The funniest thing that I was just tilting on Titan Poker, (after it dealt me a series of bad beats and dry runs starting with a NLHE tournament, the result of which I was too attached to) while I was not tilting on Full tilt poker (where I made a nice $20+ profit).

I haven't had tilt like this for many months. I think I will be resuming cash games in the weekend once I get my mind back to normal and I will try to watch out for any preliminary signs of tilting in the future.



If you have any idea on how to play these games, you are likely to come off a winner and the most important thing is that you can lower your variance in many of these games by playing the most profitable way : tight.


I am just wondering why this forum seems to dwell so much on holdem? I still want those bad players to be coming in from the holdem world and thinking queens with a 89 are going to be the best hand after the flop in Omaha, but I don't see why a lot of the other forum members are not involved in these games.

So much wrong all shoved in 1 small paragraph lol.

I dont think tournament poker is about survival at all, its about accumulating as many chips as possible to reach the final table with a great advantage to take it down entirely. Not to miss just 1 more blind round to get 34th for $40 instead of $28.

Omaha is slow wtf?!? PLO is like holdem on crack, so much action and pretty fun and exciting. ohigh/lo is a slow game because its limit, ANY limit game is slow.

I find bad plays get rewarded way more in tournaments if anything, cash game players for the most part are more skilled and understand what they are doing. Its all about outplaying your opponents and nut peddling FR and less about blinds and pressure from time based obstacles like in tournaments and SNG.

There is pot limit and no limit of both Omaha variants in addition to limit games. I usually play PLO8 (hi/lo).

Holdem Hi lo? that sounds interesting as you can only in certain situations make both hands (for a scoop). I guess its possible, but I wanna see it to believe it.

Ah yes I see that there are (some) pl and nl games for omaha hi/lo....

I just scanned thru Stars fast and saw that the highest games were all fixed limit, but there is a quite diverse range down the lower limits.

Because hold'em has a bigger edge?

Sry, wot does that mean?

I agree that it isn't really that good of a pay, but that is depending on the game based on one or two tables at once. If I was to play 10 tables (might have to play on many sites as there are rarely so many games going on one site), I could make 125-250 dollars an hour, not to count the huge amount of points or rakeback that I would get.

However, playing 10 tables for long hours would just drive me nuts, for now I will just be taking it easy as 3 or 4 tables really seems to pushing the max of what I can play fairly comfortably to build my BR.

If you're a good hold'em player, its easy to get into situations where your opponent is drawing very slim, or close to dead. However, in other games, its much harder to get into these sorts of situations.

The reason other games might be more profitable now is because players are so horribly bad at them its unreal. But as you advance in stakes, players will at least be somewhat competant at Omaha 8 or whatever, so your massive skill advantage won't be nearly as massive anymore.

However, I do find other games more entertaining, so I play them too

Txs, I get it now. Thanks for crediting me with a 'massive skill advantage,' some days I feel that way too. Others not so much. Mixing up games does give me an advantage I think, overall, to find soft spots at various sites/games.

Multi tabling HE aside, botland, I like to mix things up.

All the best.

Just to sum up this thread so far (new posts are of course still welcome)

There are some big advantages in playing games like Omaha (hi or hi/lo), 5/7 stud(8), 2-7 triple draw, razz, etc. as opposed to holdem because:
-There are a lot of players that have little grasp of the basic concepts behind these games.
-Many of these games are played in pot limit format and tend to have a lower variance (meaning that you can build BR fairly safely from low amounts by picking your spots)
-Many of these games have huge average pot sizes due to the fact that noobs are throwing their money around
-Many of these games are slower pace (Omaha tends to have around 50-60 hands per hour) and many players play at the speed of holdem, ie. they play too many hands and don't wait for the right opportunities.

There are also some disadvantages:
-Very little written about the games
-You have to be more patient
-The lower levels might not prepare you enough to play at the higher stakes
-the edge you have against better opponents might not be big enough