Help With Omaha HL

Alright. I'm looking to add some variety to my play, and I hear a lot of people talking about Omaha HL. My game of choice is NL hold em, but I get a little burnt out on it from time to time.

Could someone please tell me a little bit more about this game and what I types of things I should be aware of in this game? Is the high hand the winner, or the low hand? Do you get to use any of the hards to create your hands, or must you use all of your hole cards?

I'm vaguely familiar with the game, but need a little bit of help with understanding the ins/outs of the game. Any help or information that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

These articles are a good start:

https://www.cardschat.com/limit-omaha-high-low.php

https://www.cardschat.com/how-to-play-omaha-poker-part-2.php

https://www.cardschat.com/how-to-play-omaha-poker-part-3.php

First off, read the articles posted by Tim They'll help
The most important thing in OH8 is your preflop hand selection. The great thing about the game is that a tight hand selection alone is enough to give you a profit. Play reeeeeally tight; what you're looking for in a hand is #1, an ace, and #2 basically something that will have lots of potential for winning both the high, and the low side of the pot (like AA23, A24K, A234 etc etc - all double suited). It's not a bad idea to play high only hands (AKQJ AAKK etc) but since you're only going to be playing for half the pot, only play in multiway unraised pots, and from late position.
Try never to play hands with 7,8,or 9 in them; basically they're the cards you don't want to see in your hand.
(cue Jamile/Ossmann with better OH8 advice )

It's nice to hear that the number of PLO8 players is growing, but it's a little bit difficult to give tips, when you hardly know the rules. But I'll try and see if I can add anythingto what t1riel and Chuck allready said. I expect you will start at the low stakes ($25 or lower), so a real tight starting hand selection would be best. The best approach to theese games are to only play good startinghands, and only continue after the flop if you have some nut potential. I would not suggest raising preflop before you get a lot more comfortable with your game either. As you move up in the stakes, you wiill have to become aggresive preflop and play a lot more hands, but untill you become comfortable with playing hands with non nut potential I would recommend a tight style.
The biggest sucker hands in PLO8 is 1-way drawing hands. You should almost never chase a low draw if you don't have any high potential, or chase a high hand when there's allready a low on the board. Neither should you chase a straight if making that straight would make a low possible (This is without a doubt the sucker draw of them all).
Also when you flop a set and there's 3 low cards, it's usually correct to fold, even if it is a set of aces. The reason why folding would be correct is because other people will allready have a made low, and maybe have a draw to a straight or flush, wich means you're at best getting half the pot.
If you can avoid to play theese situations wrong, then you will become a decent PLO8 player quite fast.

Tim...Thanks for the links to the articles. The game itself is pretty much what I thought it was, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't getting into something that I knew nothing about. The only question that I still have is how do you determine who wins the pot? Meaning, does high hand win, or low hand? Or are there 2 seperate pots, one for high and one for low?

If there is a qualifying low hand, the pot is being split between the best high hand and the best low hand. If there are two equaly good low hands they each recieve 1/4 of the pot. The same goes for 2 eqauly good high hands.

Osmann said:

If there is a qualifying low hand, the pot is being split between the best high hand and the best low hand. If there are two equaly good low hands they each recieve 1/4 of the pot. The same goes for 2 eqauly good high hands.

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Just to clarify a bit for Ace: There has to be 3 cards on the board that are 8 or lower for there to be a chance of a low hand. If not the high hand will take the whole pot. Also I don't think anyone mentioned that you have to use two of your hole cards and 3 from the board. When I started I wondered wtf was going on when I kept losing hands that I thought I had won. lol

One more thing the low hand is counted backwards so lets say I have 6543A and you have 6542A you win the low hand since your 2 beats my 3.

I have found O8 is a great way to pad the BR as most people do not know what they are doing and 3/4 of the table will chase chase chase. Just beware the nuts changes with every card and you want to be pretty darn close to the nuts in O8.

Lo-Dog brings up a great point "the nuts change with every card" That is why starting hands become really important and you need high and low possibilites. You want to be able to scoop the pot and win both high and low rather then split or quarter. Patience will earn you a ton of profit as most players don't really understand the game and forget that you need to use exactly two cards from your hand. Good luck

After you get the basics down I've found the best way to win at PLO8 is to only play hands which can "scoop the pot" ie, win both he hi and the lo hand. Examples: AA23, AJJ2, etc.. Double suited is always a huge plus. I play pretty tight and aggressive in PLO8 and have been successful playing that way, however.. i would not say I'm an expert and my Omaha knowledge is not quite as extensive as it is in Texas Hold'Em.

Another thing to remember.... don't draw on nothing but a low hand I see this all the time, where I have the best Hi hand and there's 2 low cards out there, and the river brings like a 5 and some dude called down with A2-nothing-nothing. It's ridiculous and very unprofitable in the long-run

The other thing that I'd recommend while learning is that while play between Pot Limit and Limit is rather different, it may be better to start off playing the Limit Omaha High/Low games initially so that you can get a good feel for the high and low hands. There are good basic strategies which should normally result in a profit for Limit games, too - Pot Limit requires more reads, positional play, knowing the bettability of hands, knowing when to play High cards instead of Low, etc. Pot Limit should ultimately be more profitable, but Limit is probably a much safer place to start.

One other thing I found out yesterday (I play Hi Omaha only), when you're looking for the low, you need to have 5 different cards that are 8 and below. Two in your hand and 3 community. I thought I'd won the low because I had a 3/4 as part of my hole cards and the community was 3/4/8... Fortunately this lack of knowledge only cost me a quarter (ironically i was playing a HL ring game to learn more about the game )Now as to my secondary question/thought. I was having an interesting conversation with my table about whether O8 is profitable or not. I can tell you for sure that HI is but we were debating O8. Basically, the consensus seemed to learn toward no because of the splitting of pots. Obviously the goal is to scoop but I (and others) found that difficult to do consistently....</p>

With Limit Omaha/8 easily being my most profitable game to date, I can answer that O8 is profitable without a shadow of a doubt.
You can about break even from the split pots, perhaps make a small profit if the game is very loose, but you make most of your profit from the times that you get 3/4 of the pot or scoop. Therefore, you need to look for situations where enough people are in the pot that a split is worthwhile, situations where you'll split the low but get the high, and situations where you'll scoop a pot.
In particular, look for hands where you'll either probably scoop, or are almost guaranteed to get one end and may improve to get the other - this is known as freerolling as while the hand may not make much profit, you're not risking anything in continuing to play it.
In Limit it's difficult to consistently scoop, but you can find a fair number of situations where you can't lose but can win - so while often you may just split and make only a small amount from the hand, you play enough of them and you will eventually get that scoop, and make your profit. The advantage of O8 is that you can find yourself in hands where you have the low end locked up and someone has, say, a straight, and you have a flush draw, so you will win one way and may win the other sometimes. You should equally try to avoid situations where you are on the wrong end of that and can't win.
Most people making a loss do so because they call with a 2nd-best hand, or play with hands that will only split and may get scooped, and because they play too many hands too far.

medeiros13 said:

One other thing I found out yesterday (I play Hi Omaha only), when you're looking for the low, you need to have 5 different cards that are 8 and below. Two in your hand and 3 community. I thought I'd won the low because I had a 3/4 as part of my hole cards and the community was 3/4/8... Fortunately this lack of knowledge only cost me a quarter (ironically i was playing a HL ring game to learn more about the game )Now as to my secondary question/thought. I was having an interesting conversation with my table about whether O8 is profitable or not. I can tell you for sure that HI is but we were debating O8. Basically, the consensus seemed to learn toward no because of the splitting of pots. Obviously the goal is to scoop but I (and others) found that difficult to do consistently....</p>

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I actually think O8 is a lot easier to make money on then Omaha. This is mainly because the difference between solid players and fish is bigger in O8 than Omaha. It is true that scooping is what the game is all about, but the number of showdowns is very often not very high. And when there's no showdown, somebody is scooping the pot.

In PLO8, often there is no showdown, so position and the betability of your hand is important. One important aspect here is that while you just lose to the rake when you push with a one-way hand, sometimes you'll push the other player who doesn't have the nuts the other way off, and you then scoop.
In Limit there is much more likely to be a showdown, and loose tables are then beneficial - if there's 4-5 or more people in a pot then only getting half isn't so bad... and if you end up splitting the low you'll still generally avoid a loss.