Omaha Cash Game Pre Flop Strategy

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.