No-Limit Omaha Home Game

[fsuplayer]

I play with a regular group of college guys with buy-ins of $20-$30. We have always played hold'em but are starting to play about 25% omaha hi NL or PL. Our NLHE games are fairly tight/agg. but in omaha they seem to be very loose and semi-aggresive. Due to the wild changes in the value of your hand preflop to when the cards actually come out, i am unsure of what type of hands to raise with (other than the obvious AA hands). Any type of info/advice of what type of hands to raise with and how much $ compared to our .25/.50 blinds would be greatly appreciated. Also, any links to good potlimit or no limit omaha articles would be awesome. Thanks for your comments. You could take into consideration that it seems about 60-70% of the players see the flop in omaha will all but the ugliest starting hands.

[crockpot]

i have some pot limit omaha content on my website. this includes a guide to what you want in starting cards. no-limit omaha is really a pretty bad game, but if you play it similarly to PLO, with the exception of betting more when you have the nuts, you will not be far off.

a standard raise is anywhere between half and the full size of the current pot. with aces or kings, you may want to raise more to get it heads up. if you don't mind high variance, it is correct to push all in with AAxx preflop if someone has raised already.

[daryn]

just out of curiosity why do you consider no limit omaha a bad game?

[The Gift Of Gab]

It's too easy to get the nuts at Omaha. Playing the game no-limit allows people to blast out big draws that could call a pot-sized bet, and to stack preflop with AAxx. It seems this would take a lot of the play out of the game.

[crockpot]

what he said. basically, no-limit omaha is a game of flopping the nuts (or a massive draw) and hoping to sucker someone into calling an all-in. the ability to simply push in with AAxx preflop is a good example; it is too easy to get the (preflop) nuts and simply toss all your chips in.

the reason i play omaha instead of hold 'em is so i can play a game where every street has to be played well. where is that challenge in no-limit? (by the way, this is also a knock on shallow-money NLHE like you will find at party.)

[daryn]

right, i guess i'm just not understanding what you mean.. i mean couldn't the same be said for NL holdem? just wait for AA (the nuts preflop) and push in? i don't get how it's different. you probably explained it but maybe i just didn't get it.

[Zag]

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... couldn't the same be said for NL holdem? just wait for AA (the nuts preflop) and push in?

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The difference is that you get the nuts fairly frequently in Omaha, at least relative to Hold'em. In your Hold'em example, you'd lose money with that approach because you would pay more in blinds than you would win.

[daryn]

so are you saying in a no limit omaha game you would win money if you just did nothing but wait for AAxx and move in?

[crockpot]

no, but think for a minute about how much fun it would be to play in a game full of opponents who are doing this. at least one player will have AAxx maybe one hand in four, so you automatically can't play 25% of hands unless you want to take the worst of it. the nut flush draw on the flop beceomes an almost completely worthless hand if anyone who has flopped a set or straight can just move all in on the flop.

and yes, if you just waited for the nuts and pushed in, you would win in this game against typical opposition.

[muck_nutz]

Much like stud split NQ games these games _should_ have no action. Given that when you see one that does sit down and strap in. Personally I think the fact you can get a big edge at these games make them anything but "bad" games. Maybe short lived. Maybe hard to find. But not bad.

[JP789]

"and yes, if you just waited for the nuts and pushed in, you would win in this game against typical opposition."



But then you'd run into an overdraw or two and get drilled. Been there...done that.

JP789

[Shaun]

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no, but think for a minute about how much fun it would be to play in a game full of opponents who are doing this. at least one player will have AAxx maybe one hand in four, so you automatically can't play 25% of hands unless you want to take the worst of it. the nut flush draw on the flop beceomes an almost completely worthless hand if anyone who has flopped a set or straight can just move all in on the flop.

and yes, if you just waited for the nuts and pushed in, you would win in this game against typical opposition.

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I used to play this game all the time, and while I hate Omaha in general, this game is not really all that bad. Sure, you can go all-in with AAxx pre-flop, and no one will call. So you won't do that. You might limp re-raise. But then, you might get KKQJ ds and decide, hey, I'm going all-in. Sure, you can flop a flush draw and have to fold because someone pushes in with a set. But as you know, the nuts on the flop in Omaha are not always favored to win the pot. If the nuts pushes in against a wrap str8 plus nut flush draw or similar hand, the nut is in trouble long term. The game is definitely different than PL, but a winning strategy is not neccessarily that different. You still need to get paid off on big hands, and you still need to be able to make decisions. Going all-in with only AAxx will not get the money. By the way, FSUplayer, is that Florida State? Are you playing this game in Florida?

[Mackas]

I play in a home game where a couple of players have experience of regular internet poker, the others just enjoy our game every couple of weeks. Most players are reasonable to good NLHE players by now but recently we began to introduce Omaha as well. At first because the non internet players had no experience of PL we played Omaha NL and it just didn't work well. In the end we introduced PL and everyone, even those who had no experince previously of PL preferred it that way with Omaha. That leads to the question of why? Well I think the main prblem was in HE NL works well because you can have a decent to big favourite pre-flop, for example AA vs anything else is at least say 4 to 1 favourite. In omaha even the best hand is not that much of a favourite preflop over other hands. This becomes a problem when some players in the game know what they are doing and others only know that they have seen all sorts of hands take down the pot in omaha and figure until you see the flop anything could win. What happens then is someone aggressive looks down to find a decent looking hand say a middle rundown like 5678 ss and raises it. Someone else re-raises them with another decent looking hand, say KKT9 and then you look down and see AAxx. What do you do? You re-raise all-in and you're going to get called twice and then suddenly you more than likely need to catch at least another A or a baby pair on board to win. So almost every hand becomes a gamble if there's heavy preflop raising NL and its very difficult to get your money in as a big favourite. I'm not sure I'm explianing this too well but I'll carry on. The point is if the game has a few aggressive or semi aggressive players who don't know the game well the whole thing can degenerate into a crapshoot if played NL, one in which it is very difficult for someone who knows what they are doing to get an edge if there is substantial raising preflop. NL might work if most players know what they are doing and realise that its pointless to put it all in preflop unless you're sure you can at least isolate a player. On the other hand if all the players do know what they're doing although NL might work do you really want to play in a game where everyone plays well (except in a social context of course). The other way to control the problem then and ensure that good play and a knowledge of the game stand up at least once in a while is to play PL. PL also adds subtleties of its own over and above curbing the madness which can only improve the game anyway. At the end of the day PLO is a mad enough game in its own right and given how that can be taken to a whole new level if the game is played NL i think it's a fair enough comment that NLO is not the best game for your average joe, your average joe being anyone with a desire to retain some sort of control over their money, sanity, and love of poker. So to that extent i agree NLO is not a good game. Hope something above made sense. Just thought I'd better nip this in the bud before psychotic NLO spreads around the world like wildfire intent on chewing up what's left of my bankroll after its vicious little brother, PLO is finally finished with it.

[fsuplayer]

Thanks for the responses guys, and yes we go to florida state. We play about three to four times a week, with tourneys every once in a while. Some pretty decent players, $20-30 buy ins most nights. Email me if you would like to play mwl9615@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
And yes I would rather play PL, but they still like NL bc of all of the NLHE we play. I love limp reraising with AA, but one time someone else had it too... and he made two pair with his 48o kicker cards. Crazy game.

[SwordFish]

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I love limp reraising with AA, but one time someone else had it too... and he made two pair with his 48o kicker cards. Crazy game.


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Huh ? /images/graemlins/confused.gif
How many of your hole cards you guys using ?

SF