Aces and kings in Omaha hi/lo

Pot Limit Omaha / Marcus Bateman / 24 November 2010 / Leave a Comment

One of the most interesting conflicts of hands in Omaha hi/lo arises when we look at how kings and aces compare to each other on various boards. Although aces appear to be a much stronger hand, when looking at high only hands they actually have one key weakness over a kings (or even queens and jacks).

The main problem with high only aces is that if you flop a set, there will be at least one card for a low immediately. This means that not only do you get a hand that you will need up putting a lot of money in with (top set), but often on a board with a big low draw and often many back door high hands out there. Compare this to boards which hit kings hard - there will definitely be one high card in the shape of the king, which drastically reduces the likelihood of low draws getting there.

Always remember that high hands scoop the whole pot if no low is possible, and a hand like kings is much more likely to win the whole pot than a hand like aces - the board combinations that hit the two hands when only playing high are just much more solid with kings.

Of course, the key strength of aces is that they can play both ways, both giving you low draws as well as a solid high. However, in the case of aces with no low draws, it is important to be wary of boards which seem to hit you hard - often flops including an ace will end up being a mirage forcing you into putting in many bets against hands that at the very best you chop against, and at worse regularly get scooped by.

This happens much less with the other higher pairs, simply because any time you hit the flop you are already crippling the possible lows. Over playing aces is a pretty standard leak in all forms of Omaha, but in hi/lo split it is particularly pronounced. Make sure you think hard about the board combinations and likely hands next time you seem to flop a monster - it can often be the case in hi/lo split games that your 'monster' hand is much weaker than you think.

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