General Omaha Strategy Points

If you are early on in your study of the game of Omaha and are coming from a background with another poker variant, here are three general strategy points for you to keep in mind as you play the game.

The importance of position. If you have played any kind of poker game at all, then you already know how important position is. Position allows you to get information on the possible strength of the hands against you before you act and therefore it is a very valuable tool indeed.

In Omaha, the importance of position is exaggerated because of the number of cards in play. While there are more hands that can be formed from the extra amount of cards, there are also some hands that do not work together well with all four cards. You can figure out whether your opponent has four good cards that work well with each other or whether they have a halfway hand by how they bet and thus position has a greater importance in Omaha.

The 3 and 2 rule. This is a point that has been mentioned in other articles, but it is a point that is worth hammering home simply because it is the single largest pitfall that people tend to make when they first venture into Omaha territory. You can not make a legitimate hand in Omaha unless that hand consists of exactly three cards from the board and two cards from your hand. Repeat that sentence over and over to yourself until it becomes ingrained in your mind, because if you don't remember that then at some point you are going to end up losing a lot of money in a hand.

Read your hand multiple times after the flop. If you are still early on in your Omaha education, this is something that you should definitely be doing. When considering all of the different combinations of three from the board and two from your hand, it is easy to miss one if you don't have a trained eye. Therefore, read your hand twice as soon as the flop comes out, watch what all the other players to act before you do and then read your hand once more before you react. It is easy to miss draws to straights, full houses and straight flushes in your hand and it is also easy to add a false flush draw (three cards of the same suit on the board and one more in your hand) if you aren't paying close attention to what is going on.