Omaha Strategy Part 1

Omaha is the second most popular variation of poker after Texas Hold’em. In Omaha you will receive 4 cards as pocket cards, but you can only use 2 of these 4 cards to make a game with the cards on the board. With this your hand will be determined by the cards on the board and not by your pocket cards. The fact that you have more cards to choose from makes this game easier to understand and fun to play.

Even with all these great characteristics, it’s really hard to find many players at Omaha tables or even poker rooms that run tables with Omaha games. The reason for this is that even though you have more chances to hit something good, the hand ranking goes up and this makes the pot higher than in Texas Hold’em.

The table rules are basically the same as in Hold’em; keeping the three main positions: Dealer button, Small Blind and Big Blind; Betting Rounds: Opening, Flop, Turn and River.

If you are going to play Omaha, you need to remember a couple of things to succeed. In Omaha it’s really easy to get a good hand, because you are getting more cards than in hold’em and you can choose 3 cards on the board. This makes hands like Flush or Straight useless. If you are playing Omaha your strategy should be to bet only if you get a hand better than a Full House, otherwise you will find out that many of the other players at your table have similar hands or higher than yours.

Even when Omaha gives you the advantage of having many cards to choose from, you need to remember that Omaha is not a huge game and not many players go for it. If you are planning to join an Omaha table, you should sit out for a bit and observe your opponents. Omaha players usually have a lot of experience and they might find a way to build their bankroll in you.

There are many Omaha variants, such as Omaha Hi-Lo, this variant uses the same rules as normal Omaha, but the hand ranking is really important. What Hi-Lo stands for, is that if you will win a percentage of the pot if you get the Highest hand (Hi) or the Lowest hand (Lo), so if you are playing this variant you have more chances of winning since you don’t have to focus on getting the best hand, but you can also get some money for having the lowest hand.

Keep visiting www.the-royalflush-club.com to find more strategy articles about Omaha and many other poker games.

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