Nut hand boards in Omaha

Pot Limit Omaha / Marcus Bateman / 28 April 2010 / Leave a Comment

Omaha is a game that is usually traded around the big hands of poker. Straights, flushes, and full houses are typically the bread and butter hands of ring game Omaha, and as a result certain boards should cause you to immediately slow down when encountered.

The two most obvious and important of these boards are paired boards and three to a flush boards. This is because both of the flops instantly allow a nut hand to exist. Both of these often spell danger for all but the nut flush or a full house/quads if you encounter serious action in Omaha, and weak players probably lose more money on these boards than they do on any other in Omaha.

The problem most players who are used to Hold'em face when looking at these boards is that in Hold'em you can play much looser on these boards than you can in Omaha. Flopping trips or even an over pair on a paired board in Hold'em is nearly always a good time to get the money in. In Omaha this is frequently not the case - particularly if they are bottom trips and you have no good kicker in your hand. The hands are often out there in Omaha, and situations that are simple all in situations in Hold'em are often not in Omaha.

Although weak players typically play paired boards badly, perhaps nowhere do they play worse than when flopping small flushes in Omaha. In Hold'em, a two card flush of any kind (when there are only three to a flush on the board and you have the other two in your hand) is usually a great excuse to get the money in. When playing Omaha though, a small flush is a hand that when the big money goes in is usually either roughly flipping against a set, or drawing dead against a bigger flush - not an ideal combination of possible hands when thinking about what to do with one when raised.

Arguably the key problem that faces players new to Omaha is adjusting their feel of hand ranges from Hold'em to a game that works around much stronger likely ranges. Nowhere is this more the case than on the very dangerous flops that instantly bring big hands, and playing these boards well is one of the hallmarks of all good Omaha players.

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