Omaha Cash Game Fifth Street Strategy

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.