Folding the Ace Flush in Omaha
Marcus Bateman
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Marcus Bateman /
23 March 2009 /
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Good Omaha players know that basically any hand that is not the nuts is always foldable in the right situation...
Pot limit Omaha is one of the only games where you can ever consider folding the ace flush on a non paired board.
This is especially true if playing deep stacked and the action has been very suspicious in front of you. Say you raise a hand like Ac7c8h9h and get three callers. The flop comes out 9c10cQc and it is checked around to you. You bet pot and get one call from a very tight player. The turn is a blank 2s and it is checked to you again, where you bet pot and get minimum check raised. You call and the river is another blank card - say the 5h. Your opponent thinks for a while and bets pot into you.
This is a classic situation where you often want to be considering folding the ace flush if you know the player is solid (obviously against complete fish you should be usually be calling here). Omaha is a game that is usually played around nut hands - and regardless of what that nut hand is, whether it is a straight flush or a back door straight, when the big bets come out late in a hand it usually indicates the stone cold nuts.
Like all of poker, each hand is very player dependent, and although there are some players who take this line with a set or smaller flush, there are hundreds more tight Omaha players who play the straight flush like this a very large percentage of the time, and if you can pick just a few spots like this to fold you will show a lot of extra profits over the long run.
A huge amount of the skill in Omaha is avoiding what many hold'em players consider 'setup', or 'cooler' hands, where they feel that neither player can avoid going all in. Good Omaha players know that basically any hand that is not the nuts is always foldable in the right situation, and although against lots of different player types you should probably be calling here, against many of the tight 'nut hunters' that occupy the low and middle limit Omaha games these days this is quite an easy fold.
Always remember that in Omaha the hands are nearly always out there when the big money goes in from tight players, and not paying them off is just as crucial as attacking their tightness.
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