Part III: Basic Strategy - The Flop and Beyond

Once you have the basics of starting hand selection down, you're getting somewhere. However, a player who picks all the right hands to play with but has no idea how to play it after the flop is giving up the edge that he or she has gained by tightening up with regard to starting hands.

Much as there are a few basic essential rules governing starting hand requirements, there are a few basic rules which essentially tell you when to stay in a hand and when to fold:

1. If you don't have a strong drawing hand to the nuts or the nut hand one-way at the moment, fold. If you do, call or raise depending on how strong your hand or draw is.
2. If you just have a low draw (nut or otherwise) with no realistic chance of making a good high hand, fold. Chasing for one half of the pot will lose you money in the long run. With a made nut low hand but no hand or draw for high, call one bet in a multiway pot but be very careful if you have to call two bets or more - there are risks associated with playing a low-only hand which will be discussed later.
3. Much like preflop, only bet and raise for value and to swell the pot if you think you have the best hand (or a very strong draw). Don't bet/raise to eliminate players, as many people will chase with poor draws.
4. There will usually be much more action on flops with 2 or 3 "low" (Ace-to-Eight) cards than there will be on flops with no or one low card(s). You can loosen up your requirements for calling one bet with a high hand or draw slightly when 2 low cards flop, as people will hang around with silly low draws. If a third low card flops or comes later on, you actually want to tighten your hand requirements slightly if you're playing for high only, as you're realistically only playing for half the pot.

As stated at the end of Part I, being able to read your own hand is essential here. Just as important on a flop is not only being able to read your own made hand, but to read your own drawing possibilities.

Taking a look at an example of a strong drawing hand will help here:

You have: AhKs3s2h

Flop: 4h5sJh

Here you only have Ace-high as your made hand, but this is a situation in which you should be raising and re-raising. It can be difficult for someone who has been playing Hold 'Em to understand that many draws in Omaha are favourite over the nut made hand - in Hold 'Em this situation very rarely occurs. Here the nut hand is JJJ54 (i.e. someone has JJxx as his hole cards), but you have a nut low draw (any A, 2, 3, 6, 7, or 8 will give you the nut low) coupled with a straight draw (any A, 2, 3 or 6 will give you a straight, though you can only make the nut straight with an A), and a nut flush draw (any heart will give you a flush). You have such a large number of outs here that you are actually a favourite over a made JJJ54 hand with two cards to come. Yes, the JJJ54 hand has a draw to a full house, but your draws are stronger, and you have a chance of escaping with the low even if you are unlucky and a 4, 5, or J comes on the turn. Therefore, you have no made hand, but actually have the best hand in terms of chances of winning the pot or half of the pot, and should jam the pot with bets and raises, as if someone is reraising you they likely have something close to the nuts, which you are a favourite over.


The above is a prime example of rules 1 and 3 in action. You have a very strong draw and are a favourite over practically any given hand, so you bet/raise. You are not betting/raising to eliminate people from the pot, in fact you want them to call and build up a pot that you know most of the time you're going to walk away with at least half of. Slowplaying is not an effective tool in low limit Omaha 8/b, as people will not respect your bets and raises anyway, so there's invariably nothing to be gained by slowplaying. Even if you've only ever shown down the absolute nuts over a long session, players at low limits will not notice this, so don't get in a habit of thinking such things as "Oh my, he's raising me and I've only shown down really good hands so far - he must have a monster hand!" Pay attention to the player and his actions - if he bets and raises a lot even with weak hands then you can reraise him more freely than you can with someone who is a "caller" and very rarely raises.

Also, don't worry too much about callers. If one person bets on a flop, then 3 players call and a fourth person raises, it's almost guaranteed that all 4 player will call the second bet. The three players who called the initial raise will often be on very weak draws, maybe a nut low draw with no high potential. It's generally the player who opens the betting and the raiser you want to pay attention to if the turn card makes a possible flush or pairs the board making a full house possible.

Be wary of flopping any set or any two-pair if you have no other draws. On co-ordinated boards with flush and straight possibilities, they are usually easy folds. A set of Jacks on a J72 flop is more valuable than a set of Jacks on a AJQ flop, because the AJQ board not only contains the threat of a higher set than yours, but there is also the likelihood that someone has a straight or a big straight draw on an AJQ flop. You could be drawing almost dead to a better made hand and a drawing hand, which is why it’s often best to fold sets and two pairs when faced with aggression. Most of the time, sets and two pairs can only be considered to be drawing hands, with only a scarce number of outs to a full house.

Playing low hands with no draw for high is often not a good idea when faced with aggression. There are two inherent dangers that come with playing low-only hands, and they are the phenomena of quartering and counterfeiting. Quartering is when one end of the pot is split, usually the low part. It's possible in a short-handed pot to lose money with the nut low by winning the pot, because you only get a quarter of the pot if you split the low pot with someone, and in a 2-3 handed pot you will have put in more than a quarter of the chips. This can be a concern, and is a reason to note how the others at your table play A2xx hands. Quartering is not so much of a concern in pots with lots of players involved (which most pots at low limit will be), as you can split the low with another player and still get back more money than you put into the pot in these cases - the only worry is that of 3-way splits, which occur so rarely as to be inconsequential - and by the time you realise a low pot may well be split 3 ways you're usually priced into it anyway and will lose more by folding than calling down.

The other danger is that of a low hand being counterfeited. Take this example:

You have: A2KK

Board: 568 (suits are irrelevant here)

You have a made nut low hand, A2568. However, there is a danger of this nut low being counterfeited if an A or 2 appear on the turn or river. If an A or 2 appear your A2568 is no longer the nut low, A2356 is. This is not a major concern as long as you understand that there is a slight possiblilty your nut low on the flop may not be good after the river. This and the quartering risk are why overplaying a low hand with no high possibilities is invariably a bad idea. Counterfeit protection is important in some cases, for example if you held A23K in the above example, you would still hold the nut low even if an A or 2 turned. This is counterfeit protection, and a protected low is obviously somewhat more valuable than an unprotected low with 2 cards still to come.


Turn card play is often very similar to play on the flop. If you have a huge draw to the nuts and it hits on the turn, bet/raise. If you have a huge draw but it missed, often betting and raising is still a good idea unless your draw is no longer to the nuts (for example if the board has paired and you have a flush and straight draw), in which case either calling one bet (fold for more than one bet, as this is a huge sign the full house is out there) or just plain folding to the first bet is in order, depending on your reads on players and the number of players in the pot (the more players in the pot, the more likely it is that someone has made a full house when the board pairs). With a good low hand you can be more free in what you call with, but any non-nut low hand with no draws for a nut or near-nut high hand is always an easy fold in a big multiway pot.

Your decision at the river is the easiest of them all. Either you have the nuts or the near-nuts for high and/or low, or you don't. With the nut high, you obviously want to pump more money into the pot. With a nut low and a near-nut high, betting and raising is also the best option - you will find your opponents end up on the wrong end of a quartering. Anything you're unsure about, usually calling one bet but almost always fold to two is best, unless you have a decent high hand and the better and raiser are known to raise with low hands, in which case your odds are always good enough to call a second bet if you're confident there won't be a raising war on the river. If you miss your draw(s), you fold and live to fight another day. Don't make crying calls with obviously no good hands like top pair if your draw misses on the river just because "it's only one more bet".

Obviously this is not all there is to Omaha 8/b. There are a category of advanced plays which one can make, but using these at low limits is akin to reading Shakespeare to a group of 4-year old kids - if the people barely understand the basics, there's no need to get fancy-play syndrome. Maybe I'll deal with more advanced strategy in a later guide, but for now, enjoy what the goldfish bowl of low limit Omaha 8/b has to offer.

In Part IV of this guide, we will look at Scooping the Pot.

Go back to Part II of the Omaha Poker Strategy Guide.

Return to the Poker Strategy Articles Contents page.