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The importance of not giving free cards in Omaha eight or better

In nearly all variants of poker there are situations that arise where the correct play is to try and give your opponent a free card in the hope that they hit something, due to the massive strength of your own hand.

Whether it is flopping quads in hold'em, a straight flush in pot limit Omaha, or being dealt rolled up trips in seven card stud, most poker games have situations where just checking and letting your opponent catch up is a wise move.

One of the only exceptions to this is in most situations of Omaha hi/lo. You nearly always want to be trying to get as many chips as possible in with any hand of strength, due to multitude of different draws available. Imagine that you get involved in a four way pot with 3c3s2c6d and see a flop of 3h 3d 4h and a player bets out and both players in front of you flat call. Most inexperienced Omaha hi/lo players will simply flat call here, as they are so used to making this play with quads in all other flop games.

The problem with this strategy when playing Omaha hi/lo is that you will often be losing out on lots of extra bets. If you raise when the action gets round to you, it is likely that these three players will call another bet if raised, as anyone with ace two will stick around, anyone with fours full will definitely be calling, and you might just get some weaker players to call with flush and/or straight draws.

Remember that in limit games it is critical to always be thinking about how to extract extra bets - these are the things which really tally up at the end of the sessions. It is not like pot limit or no limit games where a craftily set trap can get all of someone's chips. In the situation above you really want to try and charge the low draws as much as possible for their half of the pot - ideally you want to see the board roll out high cards which will leave you free to scoop the entire pot with your quads. Worse case scenario you will make a decent profit on your half of the pot (unless you get some brutal beat for the high end) if any of the players stick around to fight it out for their low.

Raise nearly all your big hands, charge any draw as much as possible and let the weak players pay for it again and again.

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