Selecting Starting Hands in Omaha Hi/Lo

US players are welcome

Selecting the starting hands is the most difficult, and at the same time the most important part of the Omaha Hi/Lo game, especially in the cash games. It’s essential to do this carefully if you want to win the game. In the game of Omaha Hi/Lo, there’s no such thing as playing too tight, so, if you have any doubt about your cards, in the long run, it’s better to give up rather than risk your money.

Playing too tight is not always fun, because you must have patience and wait for the right cards to arrive and the time between action could be long enough to get you bored. However, patience does have its rewards and if you play tight enough and use only the hands for which you are certain to win, you’re going to make good money at almost any table.

Now the question is how tight is tight enough? Many of the great players get to see action only in 10% to 20% of the hands and that’s the optimal strategy you have to adopt if you play for winning and not just for fun. For example, when playing HORSE, and you get a round of 10 Omaha Hi/Lo hands, it’s possible that you won’t get in any of those hands some cards good enough to play. On average, about one hand can be a sure winner and that’s the hand you have to play.

Many Omaha Hi/Lo players don’t understand the strength of their hand and that’s why they’ll go on with mediocre hands and if you play a tight poker, such players will make mistakes against you and you’ll win plenty of chips from them.

The best starting hands are obviously those that have an Ace in them, and this is the kind of hands on which you should put money into the pot. An A-2 is the ideal pair you might get, especially if it is found together with some other low cards. Even A-3 is a good pair that can be played, but only if your Ace is suited.

After a while, it might happen that you start to lose your patience as you keep getting bad cards that cannot be played and you finally get some cards that are almost good, for example, A-4-6-9, with a suited Ace. You might think that this hand is not bad enough to discard without thinking, but neither good enough to use your money without a second thought.

Many players will play such hands, especially since it happened before they once folded and got good cards at the flop. However, more often than not, such a hand will bring you into trouble, because it’s a very vulnerable hand.

A good hand is a hand in which the cards somehow connect to each other and work out good together. An example of a bad hand is K-10-3-4: this hand is one of the worst you could get: it has two bad low cards and two equally bad high cards, which are not connected to each other well enough. Some people see some potential, both in low and in the high parts of the hand, but that potential is almost insignificant and it’s better not to risk your money on such hands for which you’d have bad odds to win. In the end, the hand has just two bad low cards and two bad high cards.

All four cards should somehow connect in order to make a good hand. Many poker players are used to Texas Holdem Poker and then they see the richness in the combinations in the four cards, they’ll just go on with just a pair or a low draw or a flush draw. This is not a good strategy, as a pair has a much less value in Omaha Hi/Lo than it has in Texas Holdem. It’s best if you have all these three in one: if you have at the same a pair, a low draw and a flush draw, you have much more chances of winning, it’s as if you had 3 hands, and your opponents have just one each. You don’t get very often such good hands, in which the cards interconnect with each other, but it’s worth waiting for them, as they give you excellent odds of winning.

You should look for two pairs, or sequential cards, or hands that have two different suits. It’s even better if you have these combined. Bad hands include hands which have four low cards which are all of different suits. Three of a kind is also not a good hand, because you can’t keep all three of them, as for your final hand, you get to choose only two of your own cards and three of the community cards. This is why it’s less likely that a card of that kind will appear among the community cards.

Because the pot is split among the under-8 and all cards, it’s best if you can win the whole pot, not just half of it by having the best hand overall. The best possible hand to win the low is A2345, because you can win both the high and qualify for the under-8 cards, too. This is the reason why the best possible hand in Omaha Hi/Lo is AA23, especially if the Ace and 2 are suited, the perfect hand being if the other ace and the 3 are also suited. The second best hand is AAK2, which can give you a start to both the high (with the AK) and the low (with the A2), and as such you have a chance to win both.

If you get a great hand, it’s time to raise as much as possible, because this is the moment you’ve been waiting a long time of tight playing. If you play tight, you must not waste your opportunities, which are rather rare, so you must go on and raise and hope for the best.

Also recommended:

1. Choosing Starting Hands in Pineapple Poker Hi/lo
2. Choosing Starting Hands in Omaha Hi/Lo
3. Choosing Starting Hands in Omaha High
4. Choosing Starting Hands in Seven-Card Stud Hi/lo
5. Choosing Starting Hands in Pineapple Poker