Omaha H/L Ring

I've been trying to read about Omaha HL preflop lately. What I keep seeing (or think I keep seeing) is that I play too many hands, but I feel like if I only play with hands in which all four cards serve a purpose or work together, then I am tossing my blinds to the wind. About what percentages of limping/raising do you guys think I should have? Any other comments?

What type of O8 are you playing, limit/PL/NL. Otherwise its difficult to give good advice on this question.

You also need to tell us whether you play full ring or 6 max. That will also make a big difference in hand selection.

Sorry. I'm playing full ring and NL, but I'd also like to hear about PL and limit if it's not too much trouble.

Besides needing the other details already requested, you mention 'throwing your blinds to the wind'.

If you are calling raises and/or raising with undesirable hands in the name of 'defending' your blinds, then you are throwing more chips to the wind than just your blinds.

No, sorry for the ambiguity. What I mean is I feel like I am playing too tightly, so any money I win will not make up for the money I lose to the blinds. It feels comparable to only playing the most premium hands in HE, like high PP and AJ+ only.

If you playing NL, you can win up to 100 blinds at once and its only costing you 1.5 blinds per round, so theoreticaly if you win one pot of 200 blinds(100 of the ones yu put in every 6.66 rounds or every 59 hands or so you will be break even.

In NL you dont need to win often to be able to beat the blinds. At fullring NL my stating hand selection is around the top 15% as a general rule. I dont have PTOmaha but recall that being what it was when we went through some hands on my friends PT.

PL fullring is virtually the same, except im not playing the AAxx hands as often as its harder to get all the chips in preflop when we have the most equity.

I have no idea about FL but hope this helps

Thanks, Munch. I do realize that raising PF in Omaha is very important, but can you explain why one would want to go all-in PF with any hand in this game? I thought that in NL Omaha HL, no hand was comparable to AA in HE NL.

some hands have relatively good equity. Along the same lines as QQ vs AK in holdem.

check out this site for a equity calculator.

Heres an example of where I am willing to get it in, especially at 25nl O8 where there are a number of donks and stuff:

HandPot equityS coops Wins Hi Ties Hi Wins LoT ies Lo
AsAh2s3h 72.57% 368 ,606400 ,7713, 689264, 16612, 772
****27.43% 101, 826195, 5403, 68929, 61712, 772

the * means random(ofcourse our equity is more like 60% because they wont be calling with just all randoms).

You want to be playing hands that can scoop, which means hands that are 2 way hands.

A smart guy once said that PLO8/NLO8 is a game of AND. When you're putting money into the pot, you need AND. What I mean by this is you need a hand that goes 2 ways. So you say to yourself "I have top set AND the 2nd nut low, so I can call this bet.".

And to break things down further, I classify hands by what kind of low hands they can make when I'm playing.

1) A2 - This hand combination is almost always the nut low unless there's an A or 2 on the flop. If you never played a hand from UTG without an A2, you wouldn't be doing terribly.

2) A3, 23 - These are 1 card nut low hands. They require either an A or 2 on the flop in order to be the nut low. They also make the 2nd or 3rd nuts when there's any other low out.

3) 34, A4, 24 - Super speculative low hands that require 2 cards to hit to make the nut low.

4) No low potential. If your hand has no A, 2, or 3 in it, your low potential is almost negligible except in certain situations (blind vs. blind for example).

The worse your low potential, the more high potential you need, and the later your position needs to be. So a hand like AA45ds is good enough to play from most any position, but only because you have lots of high potential to go with your weak low draws. And hands with little or no low potential like KKQJds, KQJTds, or KK24ds can be played from very late position, and preferably in pots with few players.

But they key is that hands in group 1 & 2 with high potential are going to be your bread & butter.

That was about as good as it could be put C9! If you can follow that recipe, you aren't going to get hurt. Just try to stay away from the KKxx, QQxx type hands where you don't have any suited cards. These look really good, but they are only going to get you into trouble.