Hi Guys,
I played a few SnGs Omaha Hi and H/L
I placed in all three winning 2... but it seems according to some of the posts here it was probably more luck than skill.
So what would you say are the top tips when moving from HE to Omaha? I have been reading some of the posts and they seem to be more general strategy, but what would you say are most important to understand when starting out?
I'm figuring this out myself, been playing a month. There are several much more experienced players here than me, but fwiw, this is what I'm finding:
1. Learn hand structures and which hand structures have high equity. Get Jeff Hwang's first book on PLO (paperback, pretty inexpensive) and get a good feel for those hand structures.
2. Everyone asks a billion questions about how to play AAxx. It's a favorite preflop, but not like in NLHE - it's not an overwhelming favorite. Depending on the other two cards, though, it can be an absolute monster hand. So AA93r is a nice hand but nothing to write home about, and AAJTds is a cadillac of a hand.
3. No hand is a prohibitive favorite preflop the way that AA is in NLHE. This makes the game more of a postflop game, and your hand reading skills are critical.
4. Check out propokertools, HEM Omaha, and other resources to start looking at pot equity scenarios and get a feel for when your equity is strong enough to call bets w and when it's strong enough to raise w (and obv when it's weak enough that you should be folding).
5. Position is critical in all forms of poker, but super important in PLO. You can do things in position that are suicide out of position, much more so than in NLHE - since everyone has 4 hole cards, you really want to be last to act.
Also... what books are recommended for Omaha?
Hwang (only one I've read so far). I've seen recommendations for others, Slotboom, Ciciano, but haven't checked them out.
Note that one of the reasons PLO regs play PLO is because there are NOT a lot of good books on Omaha the way there are for NLHE - so most PLO players don't have a good foundation for their game play, making it more profitable for good Omaha players.
It seems PL is the main game... why is that?
Most potential profit. PLO is a very high variance game, but encourages/rewards risk takers and gets 100bb stacks in the middle quickly - good players are making more BB/100 than equivalent good NLHE players. Limit Omaha Hi and Limit Omaha H/L are both low variance games (kinda like Limit HE is relative to NLHE). PLO8 is in between, it doesn't encourage getting stacks in as quickly as PLO, and you always have to worry about splitting the pot or getting quartered.
Finally... what sites have the best games... ie most profitable?
I can only speak to microstakes at PS and UB. UB seems soft to me at micro, esp for PLO8 (really weak players and weak regs at $0.05/$0.10), PLO 6max is a little stronger - but they don't have a lot of tables running, and they don't have $0.02/$0.05 tables, which is what I'd rather play there. PS tables are harder at the same stakes, the regs are better, but still not good at those stakes. I just started playing $0.05/$0.10 PLO tables at PS, so far I haven't found them any harder than $0.02/$0.05 tables.