I've been playing a bit more Omaha lately - it grows on you. I can't say I prefer it to Hold'em yet, but I can understand why people say that.
I certainly am not going to claim I'm good at it, although I am winning at low limits online. Furthermore, I have now had a second-ever winning live session (!).
In fact on Wednesday night, I was essentially free-rolling in the game. I had gone down to play the £75 freezeout and, in the actual tournament, I had been really all over the place and eventually finished in a nondescript 25th or so. I didn't deserve to do better.
I had played a short stint in the small £1/1 Hold'em beforehand and turned £100 into £300. I was playing pretty carefully, and had moved forward a little when I held pocket 5's on the Big Blind. It had been raised to £5 and called in several spots to me, so it was an automatic call.
The flop was a dream - JJ5 ! I checked, and a MP player bet £15. I have a real monster but there were two clubs on board so I thought I could represent a draw by re-raising. The original flop raised obviously had a big hand as well, and it all went in.
He in fact had KJ, so he'd hit the flop pretty hard himself ! He had some outs, of course, but he didn't improve and that capped off a nice win.
So, I took the £200 and used it as my stake in the £1/1 Omaha. It turned out to be a pretty lively game. I am not sure my play was exactly "textbook", and I was fortunate to have some pre-flop hands stand up (I never had Aces pre-flop, in fact, but I think my Kings held 3 times out of 3 which you certainly can't grumble about).
The "text" for this post is the following hand in which I did something I have never done before in Omaha and - until recently - I couldn't conceive how I would ever do it.
I speak, of course, of folding the nuts. Inconceivable in Hold'em (surely) but I had read that in Omaha it can sometimes be almost automatic. I couldn't get my head around that concept until this hand came up and now I am a believer !
I held 689Q with 2 spades. I can't remember the exact action that brought us to turn, but the board now read K567, with 2 hearts. There was £76 in the pot, 3-handed with me last to act. I had just turned the nut straight (nice).
I was just thinking to myself that I would now be making a big bet to make trips, two pair or flush draw hands pay when the action went: BET (£60) - POT (£256). Now onto me !
Wow .... well the way I saw it, I have only put < £20 into this coup so far but if I continue, then it's > £250 and most likely I have to put my whole stack in (£450) when it seems overwhelmingly likely that at least one of the other players also has 8-9 and between them some or all of a higher straight card, a flush draw, two-pair or trips. So it looks like I have to put in £450 for the right to split the pot at best.
I decide it's actually quite an easy fold. As it turns out, the re-raiser has 689T and the other (who did call and called all-in on the river) has 2 hearts and a set of Kings. The river was a blank (Ad) so as it happens I would have split the third player's stack but I feel that I have improved my game just by being able to identify the likely danger.
Some people at the table argued it was right for me to call even knowing the likely scenario. Their logic seemed to be based on either or both of (i) in the actual situation, I have some equity to call for what happened and (ii) the possibility that the first bettor did NOT have the nuts and that the re-raiser knew this so that in fact I had the winning hand. TBH, I think there may be a good case on (i) but knowing the player who made the re-raise, I was close to 100% that he had the nuts with good back-up.
As it was, I felt good about the pass and it turned out to be a nice win in the end, so I like Omaha even a little bit more now.
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