News / Imper1um / 03 July 2009 / Leave a comment

One of the key mistakes hold'em players make when they start playing pot limit Omaha is to continuation bet at a similar frequency to what they do in hold'em. This is nearly always a big mistake in pot limit Omaha though, for two key reasons.

Firstly, you deal with many more multi way pots in Omaha, simply because the extra hand combinations entice more players into the hand than they do in hold'em, and it is much harder to continuation bet into numerous people in any genre of poker.

Secondly, hands hit much more often in Omaha than they do in hold'em. Most of the reason that continuation betting is successful in hold'em is because the majority of the time people miss the flop completely.

In Omaha this is not the case, and most of the time player(s) will have hit something on the board. As a result, players are much more likely to call a continuation bet from you, simply in case you have junk or they turn a bigger hand.

Because of this, it is important that you adjust your continuation bet frequency. If players are happily calling flop bets with relatively very weak hands (calling with bottom or middle pair regularly in pot limit Omaha is a recipe for disaster in the long run), then the obvious way to take advantage of them is to lower your continuation bet frequency and start using the value of your hand to win the money.

Omaha is a game that is much more to do with numerous streets of betting than just the pre flop and flop game that no limit hold'em often is. Due to the pot limit nature of the game the money has to go in over numerous streets, and as the board and the possible nuts changes so easily in Omaha, constantly firing at the flop can be a weak strategy against any good player.

By changing the frequency with which you fire at the flop, you make your opponent's life much tougher in the long run, and this usually adds up to a great deal more profit at the end of the year.

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Tags: imper1um, plo, poker strategy, pot limit omaha, sorel mizzi, wsope