20? For
Omaha Holdem Poker: The Action Game? I was told it was the best book on Limit Omaha, though it's really short: 106 pages! If you subtract the index, TOC and chapters on things like the rules, origin and future of Omaha that aren't of use to me, it'd be up to $2 per page of useful text. Sure, it could easily be worth it, Amazon didn't have it in stock, and I decided to keep my eyes open for a cheap used copy for a few weeks. In an earlier life I was a molecular biologist, and I got burned as a student investing in some excellent books that didn't fit my needs/style (e.g. Field's Virology, at $175
starving college student 1985 dollars).
I'll probably move to PLO when I have a fuller grasp of limit. I have an odd -or perhaps typical?- history with Omaha. I originally dabbled online with draw poker in the early days when there was a lot of it. I got into HE after the first TV broadcasts (before the NHLE Tidal Wave started in the second year), and I don't know how I ended up at a Omaha table. I guess it was because there were always a few 6-handed $1/2 Omaha tables at Party, 24/7. After a series of bad beats by chasers, Omaha's four cards looked soothing: a better chance of catching a piece of the board, and a short table meant less chance of a chaser beat.
Okay, okay, quit laughing! Obviously, I needed a short bus, not a short table. I see the game totally differently now. When I look back on my impressions of the game then, I can't believe I'm the same person thinking about the same game. My theories on starting hands and strategy now seem... bizarre, to say the least. Yet I won!
[The road to hell is paved with juicy pots. Maybe *that's* why they always say you should pull over and enjoy the scenery, instead of hurrying on to your inevitable final destination.]
After a while I lost interest in HE and online poker, and quit playing for over a year. Coming back, my interest is more theoretical. Make money is nice, sure, but I'm not looking for an income stream. I have no interest in 8-tabling -- you may *see* more interesting hands per hour, but the clockwork pace doesn't leave much time to savor and ponder those hands.
I can definitely see why PLO would be more interesting, but for reasons of personal history, I want to get Limit down first. I still have things to learn in full-table and I need to learn short-table all over again. [I can't believe I was once a 6-seat specialist who thought 10-seat Omaha was for chumps. Today, I can hardly play my old 6-seat $1/2 tables. There's no sense of familiarity at all.)