Pot Limit Omaha Online at Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker is well known for their Pot Limit Omaha Games which often are populated by Full Tilt Pros such as Gus Hansen, David Benyamine, Erik Lindgren and dozens of other sponsored players. While these pros are often playing at the higher limit games on occasion they do stop by the lower limit games to tilt off a few stacks while chatting with players.
How to Play Pot Limit Omaha
If you’re not familiar with Omaha it’s much like Texas Holdem in that the betting rounds and community cards work exactly the same. The major difference is that players start with four hole cards, as opposed to the two hole card players starts with in Holdem, and are required to use exactly two of these four cards towards making a five card poker hand. This is a point a lot of newer players get confused by, so keep in mind: 2 from your hand, 3 from the board – every Omaha hand will ALWAYS consist of that combination.
It’s easy to make big hands in Omaha. Holdem players making the transition to this game have tendencies to over play their pocket aces or over-bet their straights, trips and non-nut flush hands. These hands can all be good in certain situations, but are nowhere near as strong as they are in Hold’em.
The key to beating this game is to play with better than the nuts (best possible hand at the moment). Often times in Omaha the player who flops the nuts is actually behind in the hand as his opponents has a better chance of making his various draws than the player has for his nut hand to hold up. By “better than the nuts” we mean either hands that will make a better hand more often than the current nuts will hold up or even more ideally to be playing with nut hands that have one or more redraws.
An example of a redraw is a hand where a player holds KKQJ and the flop comes K9T. In this spot the player has the nuts at the moment and also has full house and quad possibilities. This is and example of a very strong Omaha hand – the tricky part is trying to figure out what to do with nut hands with mediocre redraws. This is why pros love this game as a lot of though goes into calculating odds of both your own hand completing, but also how likely your hands and redraws will be best at showdown by considering an opponents holding ranges.
Learning Pot Limit Omaha
As we just mentioned, Pot Limit Omaha is a game the best poker players in the world tend to fall in love with. This is because it’s a complex game and even an average player can find himself playing in spots that appear unbeatable. This is all the more reason though to learn the game as once you’ve even started to master it, its one of the most profitable poker games online.
The best way to learn Pot Limit Omaha is through a combination of both practice and studying. For practice, we suggest playing at both Full Tilt Poker and Bodog Poker as the playing styles are quite different at both. For example at Full Tilt you’ll find a lot of hands are won uncontested after the flop and at Bodog you’ll find a lot more showdowns, most of them being all in situations with cards still to come. Playing both sites will really help you learn different aspects of the game.
As far as recommended reading we suggest both Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha by Rolf Slotboom and Lyle Berman’s Omaha Hi section in Doyle Brunson’s Super Systems Two. These authors play such different styles from on another that after reading these books you’ll be left shaking your head wondering if both these players are playing the same game. By reading both books you’ll be able to decide which approach best fits your playing-style and you’ll then be able to formulate your own unique playbook incorporating both authors advice.
Once you’ve got some practice in the games and have read a lot on strategy we suggest forums such as 2+2 which has a wealth of knowledge and discussion on all forms of gambling and also to visit sites looking for Omaha articles. PokerPages.com and playwinningpoker.com are both good sources for Omaha strategy articles.
