Omaha Hi Lo (be careful)
There are two phenomena of Omaha that should colour your your selection and play of hands. The first is that the nuts are constantly changing. Let us take a typical Omaha H/L hand as an example. The flop comes down 8c 9c Ah. A hand containing AA is currently the nuts, but there are two cards to come, and any club, or any 5, 6, 7, T, or J will allow for some better hand. Let us now say that 5s comes on the turn. So now a straight is possible, but that straight must be scared that the board will pair (there are 12 cards that might pair the board), a flush will come (7 additional cards), or that a better straight will become possible (12 additional cards). Similarly, in a high/low split game, consider A2QJ on a 358 flop. This hand has four outs to make a strong Hi hand, and the nut low. But if one of the three aces or three deuces remaining in the deck turns or rivers, then A4, A6, 46, A7, 47, and 67 will all be better low hands. This is called getting counterfeited, and is the primary danger for the nut hand on any street other than the river in Omaha.
So if you make a hand such as the top set, you must either bet so strongly that most of the other hands fold and only one hand (with many fewer outs than the rest of the table combined) is drawing against you, or you must check and wait for the board to pair. I favor protecting your hand with a pot-size bet, but watch your table. If most of the table will call, then potting with a hand will lose you chips unless that hand improves with additional cards. Similarly, a hand with A2 but no other low cards is very easy to counterfeit, while a hand such as A247 offers many low options even if an ace or deuce comes down. If the ace is suited, you might even scoop the pot.
The second phenomenon is getting quartered. Let us say that the board is 3358Q and you hold A2. A second player also holds A2, and a third player holds QQ3. All three players have very strong hands, and QQ has a three in his hand so he is also holding the nuts. Every player has the nuts. However, when all of the chips go into the pot, each player has contributed one third, while QQ is going to take half and the other two players only a quarter. So despite having a nut hand, you can lose chips. A2 in particular is susceptible to this because many players refuse to throw away a hand containing A2 (many hands containing A2 indeed should be thrown away, if the other two cards do not make sense. Why play one hold’em hand against six?). So as a final word of advice, in a split high-low game, extra consideration should be given to hands with the potential to make a strong Hi hand. 40% of the time, no low will be possible anyway on an Omaha board, so the Hi hand will scoop the pot. The rest of the time, a strong Hi hand is difficult to quarter. And of course the best possible hand can win both halves, scooping the pot even when it is split.
So we can see that when selecting a hand, it is critical to consider what a good flop for that hand might be and whether that hand is really capable of making the nuts. Sets very often fail to win unimproved in a multiway pot, while a nut flush or a nut straight on a non-flush board wins unless the board pairs. When playing a hand, figure out whether a strong bet will protect your hand by folding out most or all of those drawing against you, or whether the blinds are so small or the players so loose that most of the table will call you, giving each other pot odds. This behavior does have a name as well, schooling, after small fish that swim together in groups to avoid being eaten by larger fish. If you are at a table where you will get schooled, simply wait to make a hand against which the others are drawing dead, and then let them school.
In particular, early in a tournament you will find that players tend to be loose and will both school and pay you off, while later in a tournament a strong bet is more often respected and will isolate only one drawing hand against which you are the favorite. At a low-buyin ring game or even a moderate limit game, you should definitely expect to be schooled, and if you flop top set, consider yourself not as having the current nut hand, but as having 7 outs to pair the board of make quads on the turn followed by 10 on the river if you miss. It is for this reason that I advocate playing so tightly early in a tournament — Omaha is a wild game in which the dynamics of the hand are constantly changing, and while in a ring game you have to gamble when you have a smaller edge, a tournament allows you to just sit there and collect when you have a nut hand. So why do anything else?
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