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]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

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.