Omaha Cash Game Fourth Street Strategy

So you have managed to find a hand that you like to enter the pot pre-flop and on the flop you encountered a hand that you felt was worthwhile continuing with. As the fourth card falls onto the board, you are now going to have a lot more information. Your own hand will be quite a bit more fleshed out and so will your opponents' hands. Because a lot more will be known about how the hand might play out at this stage, you need to pay a lot more attention to what your opponents do.

In the previous article on cash game strategy at the flop, it was said that while bluffing was rare, there were times when people would try it. As you get to Fourth Street, assuming that you or your opponents have been showing strength either in betting or in strong calling, bluffing is going to become even rarer. When people show a willingness to go beyond the flop in Omaha (and this is also true for Hold 'Em), bluffers will usually think twice about trying it again. Depending on the situation, it requires a special kind of bravery or alternatively a special kind of stupidity to bluff into someone on the turn in a cash game when they have already called one bet and this is especially true if you are playing with the limit betting structure.

This means that if someone bets again on the turn, they usually have a hand worth respecting. You need to take a look at how your hand has improved, but you also need to be cognizant of the hands out there that could have improved to hands better than your own. This is most evident with straights and flushes.

Remember the example hand from the pre-flop section of As-Ks-Qc-10c? Well, would there be a difference in how you would respond to the bet if the board had the Ac and Kc as opposed to if it didn't? What if the board just had the Ac or the Kc?

These are considerations you need to take into account in Omaha. While many Hold 'Em textbooks will tell you to be more afraid if the Ace is not on the board in flush situations than if it is, in Omaha you need to be afraid of both. If you were willing to enter the hand with As-Ks-Qc-10c, who's to say that someone else doesn't have a similar two-suited hand that involves the King of Clubs? That hand would out-flush you, even if the Ace of clubs was on the board. With four cards to worry about, all of these considerations need to be taken into account when a bet is made and you need to proceed very slowly and cautiously because of them.