Omaha General Tournament Strategy

May 18, 2009 - by admin · Filed Under Omaha Strategy Leave a Comment 

There are a number of different tournament strategies that you can employ in the game of Omaha, however when you take a look at all of them one thing you will notice is that they basically boil down to three different general categories: conservative, aggressive and super-aggressive.

Conservative: This is the initial type of tournament strategy that was used for Omaha and indeed the reason that it is still so popularly in use is that it tends to mimic the cash game strategies that many rocks use very closely. Your goal in a conservative strategy is to sit back, wait for hands and then collect on those hands whenever you can. You should only be playing about the top 10% of hands with this strategy in the early tournament and the rest of the time you should be closely examining your opponents to find the super-aggressive players. Super-aggressive players are the ones that you want to try to milk when you get the good hands, so the conservative strategy centers on you finding and exploiting these players. The conservative strategy calls for tight-aggressive play.

Aggressive: The aggressive strategy is one that acts as an intermediate between conservative and super-aggressive and your basic goal here is to keep your opponents guessing. You want to do this by alternating your play between loose-aggressive and tight-aggressive (try not to play passively if you can) depending on the table conditions and the hands that you are being dealt. Because the aggressive strategy is intended to be as much a strategy of misdirecting other players as it is a strategy of analyzing them, it is best used in the middle-to-late sections of tournaments when players are together at tables for long periods of time.

Super-aggressive: Starting requirements? We don’t need no stinkin’ starting requirements! This is the mantra of the super-aggressive player and indeed in Hold ‘Em you probably already know quite a few super-aggressive players. Phil Ivey and Gus Hansen have made super-aggressive play quite popular around the world and indeed in Omaha super-aggressive players can be extremely scary because of the larger number of cards that they have to try and bluff people out of pots. Super-aggressive players will play around 3-4 hands during each round of a table and while it can be a very good strategy for collecting chips early, it is also a strategy that requires a lot of energy to maintain.

Omaha General Sit N Go Strategy

May 18, 2009 - by admin · Filed Under Omaha Strategy Leave a Comment 

One of the areas that is relatively similar between Texas Hold ‘Em and Omaha in terms of the basic strategy that is used is the Sit N’ Go realm. When you were very early on in your Hold ‘Em education, most likely your plan was to play super tight at the start of the tournament and then as time progressed and people began to be eliminated, you likely opened it up a bit and took advantage of your tight reputation in order to steal pots and build up your chip stack. Well, in Omaha the general strategy is the same and a few comments are going to be made on different parts of it below. For the purposes of this article, the assumption is that you are playing a 9 or 10-person Sit N’ Go with either limit or pot limit Omaha.

Early (7 or more players left): This is the part of the Sit N’ Go where most players in both Omaha and Hold ‘Em make their fatal mistakes. An important thing to keep in mind is that you can not win the Sit N’ Go from this stage, but you can definitely lose it and in a game like Omaha where there are so many different hand possibilities you can lose it by doing a number of very stupid things. To avoid this, play extremely tight as long as there are at least seven players left in the tournament. Your goal should be to play about half the number of hands you would normally play in a tight cash game strategy; the fish will kill each other off at this stage.

Mid (4-6 players left): Now that you have gotten past the early treacherous stage of the Sit N’ Go, you can loosen up a bit and play any hands you would normally play in a full-table cash game with a tight strategy. This should still have you tighter than the other players at the table, because you want to keep your tight image for later on.

Late (3 players left): Now that you are in the money, it is time to let loose and be super-aggressive. You have a tight reputation built up from before, so use that tight reputation to your advantage in stealing pots and building up your chip stack. You want to finish the tournament either in 1st place or in 3rd place, since both positions will pay you money. You do not have to worry about major hand possibilities because there are only three people left in the tournament, so focus on hands that have high cards in them (no more than 2 of the same rank though) and push them extremely hard in an effort to make chips and bust the other players.

Omaha Sit N Go Betting Considerations

May 18, 2009 - by admin · Filed Under Omaha Strategy Leave a Comment 

The two previous articles on sit n’ go strategy covered not only the general strategy that has been outlined for the game of Omaha, but also the hand selection that you should be considering at each stage of that strategy. In that same spirit, this article will cover the types of bets you should be considering at the different tournament stages.

Early (7 or more players left): If you remember from the previous article, when you are early on in an Omaha Sit N’ Go your object is to start and maintain a super-tight reputation so that the other players at the table think that you are an extremely tight rocky player. Therefore, whenever you do bet, you need to bet big. If you are in a pot limit Omaha Sit N’ Go, then you almost certainly want to enter the pot with a pot-sized raise. If you are in limit, make sure that you never call pre-flop; only raise. You want people to consider you extremely tight and extremely aggressive so that they stay out of your way when you do decide to get involved in a pot.

Mid (4-6 players left): You want to continue this strategy into the mid stages of the tournament, although you can feel free to call with some of the more speculative hands that you might enter a pot with. However, the majority of your pre-flop work should still be raising, because you want people to think that you only bet when you have the nuts or something close to it and when you do then you bet big. If you make people believe that, then they will give your raises respect and you are going to need that respect later on down the road.

Late (3 players left): The late strategy is different from the early and mid strategy, although not in the actions that you take. You still want to raise big to force other people out of pots; take the initiative and make the other person make the decision whenever possible. The difference is that in the late game you want to do it with a wide range of hands. That tight-aggressive reputation you built up earlier is going to come in handy when you switch to a loose-aggressive playing style. The blinds represent significant portions of stacks at this stage of the competition and therefore every pot that you steal represents you getting one step closer to total victory.

Omaha Cash Game Pre Flop Strategy

May 18, 2009 - by admin · Filed Under Omaha Strategy Leave a Comment 

Throughout these articles the main theme of Omaha being quite a different beast to tackle in comparison to Hold ‘Em has been discussed at length, but nowhere is that going to be more painfully obvious than in the actual sections that deal with round-by-round cash game strategy. Obvious because of the content of these articles and painful because if you try to play Omaha like you would Hold ‘Em you are going to end up losing quite a lot of money.

You need to pay a lot more attention to position in Omaha, primarily because of the fact that everyone starts with twice as many cards. This allows a greater range of hands to be formed and ultimately means that the good players can exploit the bad ones a lot easier. You want to play extremely tight when you are in early position and progressively looser as you get to late position. When you are in the blinds, you want to be prepared to enter the pot with more hands because of the wider range of possibilities for each hand that you have.

That is general positional strategy before the flop, but you also need to know something about starting hands. Now, starting hands in Omaha are differently selected from starting hands in Hold ‘Em because certain players enjoy playing certain styles. However, what you want to look for are hands that work well with each other and give you the full range of hand possibilities. A hand like As-Ks-Qc-10c is a great hand to start with, because not only do you have two possibilities for getting a flush out of the hand but you also have possibilities tied towards multiple straight draws.

Your hand is also high card heavy so even if you don’t end up with a straight you might end up with a good two pair or even a full house. These are cards that work well with each other and you will notice that this hand is actually better than As-Ks-Qs-Js because of the fact that you have two useless spade cards and less flush possibilities with approximately the same number of straight and high card ones.

Choosing cards that work well together is what it’s all about and that is why Omaha is more of a thinking game than Hold ‘Em. One place in which the two are similar however is that aggression is good as long as it is done intelligently. A way to accomplish intelligent aggression is to always enter the pot with a raise rather than a call; something that a lot of Hold ‘Em strategy books suggest as well.

Omaha Cash Game Fifth Street Strategy

May 18, 2009 - by admin · Filed Under Omaha Strategy Leave a Comment 

Well, here you are; arrived at the end of the game at last. You hopefully have a very strong hand now (or perhaps a good bluffing opportunity, although in Omaha it is usually less likely to work) and are ready to call the bet and show the hand down. Well, strategy isn’t as important on this last round as it is in the other three and it is also different depending on the betting structure you are currently playing in.

For betting structures relating to limit bets (fixed limit and spread limit), what you are going to find is that there really is not strategy involved. If you think you have the hand won then you can lead out and bet and if you are not sure you can just check and call one more bet. The pot odds for one more bet are going to be so high that you would have to think you had a single digit percentage chance of winning before you could even consider laying the hand down and most of the times not even then. It is quite simple, so the problem really shifts to what to do when you are involved in higher limit games.

There is not much no limit Omaha around these days in cash game form; pot limit tends to be more popular. Of course, with a gigantic pot at the end of the hand and a willingness by both sides to raise and re-raise there is really no difference in practical terms between pot limit and no limit. This means that you need to be very sure about your hand before you get into a raising war. Sometimes your hand is going to be so strong that you just know right away that you have it, but in times of uncertainty there is not really much that you can do to show it down cheaply if you and your opponent have been betting the whole way.

The best thing that you can do in that case would be to simply try and check in a very nonchalant way. If the river card turns out to be a scare card (for example a card that completes a full house) and you suddenly check after betting the whole way, your opponent (assuming they don’t have the full house) might get suspicious and give you a free showdown. If they don’t however, then all you can do is play it according to pot odds. Try to gauge the mathematical strength of your hand (just like you would in Hold ‘Em) and compare that to what odds the pot is offering you. If the math works out, then make the call. It’s usually hard to fold a made hand on fifth street, so don’t feel too bad if you call and end up losing the hand. Just shrug it off and move onto the next hand; don’t let yourself get on tilt.

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