Playing the high

Poker Variants / Marcus Bateman / 20 May 2010 / Leave a Comment

In the modern era (no doubt due the emphasis on playing a tight range of low hands in the early poker books), many players seem to only get involved with hands with low or scooping potential.

The true marginal hands of Omaha hi/lo are the high only hands. Hands with the potential to 'scoop' both the high and the low are pretty easy to play, as are hands that only hit the low (as the hand combos are so simple with the low that you nearly always know where you are), but high hands can often be extremely difficult - as they are the hands that are usually the hardest to establish exactly where you are with.

However, the marginal hands of poker are where the money is made, and high only hands can often provide you with some of the most profitable situations in the game. As hand ranges are much broader with high only hands, you have to be much more observant of player type and calling ranges if you want to succeed with these hands - but the profits for such observations can be very large.

One of the best examples of this is in hands with two cards to a low on the flop. Here your hand may actually be much stronger than it appears, as your high hand may well have pretty solid scooping potential if the board runs out high. Low hands are only possible in Omaha hi/lo if three unpaired cards or more below eight are on the board - a scenario that can be very profitable for the high end of the pot if it never materialises.

In the modern era (no doubt due the emphasis on playing a tight range of low hands in the early poker books), many players seem to only get involved with hands with low or scooping potential. These can provide ripe targets when you have a high only hand, as a solid evaluation of board texture post flop will often give you a sizeable edge over them. The very thing that makes low hands easy to play (their very limited range of possible hands), also makes them easy to play against, as frequently low hands are effectively played face up - a point any skilled player with a marginal high hand can jump upon.

When starting out in the game, it is best to keep your play of high hands limited, but over time it is essential to broaden out into them. The rocks of Omaha hi/lo get beaten in the long run by the solid players simply through the high hands (as good players make money from them when rocks don't), and spotting the boards and player types to get involved with these hands is crucial to taking your game to the next level.

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