Post Flop Play NL Hold 'Em v Pot Limit Omaha
If you are new to Omaha, it is really important that you try and wipe out a great deal of the standard thought processes you use in most other poker games – particularly in terms of how you deal with scare cards and multi-street play.
One of the core reasons why Pot Limit Omaha has become such a popular game in recent years is the simple fact that play nearly always ends up having to go much further distances than in Hold'em - particularly when playing deep-stacked. Unlike Hold'em, where players will often end up all in pre flop or on the flop, Omaha is a much harder game to get your stack in; as the pot limit structure, lack of clear pre flop equities, and myriad of flop draws make pre flop and flop calling much more frequent.
This makes the playing of scare cards much harder, as not only will there be more people in the pot to increase the chances of someone having a hand that gets hit, each player has more cards, making basically every board change have to be reacted to in most cases. At points in Omaha it can feel like the nuts are changing nearly every street, and being able to keep your head and cope with these huge swings in possibility and action are key to winning at the game.
All good players love any game that forces more play, as every extra decision in poker aids the skilled player over the weak. In Omaha this effect is particularly pronounced, as weak players find it very hard to fold hands with good absolute strength, which is a huge leak in a game which is near solely dependent on relative strength. In Omaha, no hand but the nuts is even close to a certainty to win, and even many of the nut hands can actually be dogs to big draws. This makes falling in love with basically any hand bar straight flushes and quads (and even these can be folded in some rare cases) a recipe for disaster in Omaha, something players used to Hold'em and other forms of less varied poker really struggle with.
If you are new to Omaha, it is really important that you try and wipe out a great deal of the standard thought processes you use in most other poker games - particularly in terms of how you deal with scare cards and multi-street play. In a game so full of strong hand match-ups, it is critical that you make sure that you are able to fold non nut hands in pretty much all situations against all but the worst opponents. Just getting to showdown in Omaha is often an ordeal of near epic proportions, and being able to retain clear and relative thinking is critical if you want to ever get there intact.
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