Omaha
High/Low:
Patience
Is A Virtue
BY:
Russ Fox
“A
handful of patience is worth more than
a bushel of brains.” So says a Dutch proverb.
Whether you believe that or not for how
you play hold’em, it is very true for
Omaha high/low.
Why?
Well, recently I played a typical session
of Omaha. Seated to my right was a gentleman
(I’ll call him Sam, not his real name)
who proudly exclaimed, as he sat down,
“I’m going to play EVERY HAND [his emphasis]
before the flop, and NO ONE is going to
stop me.” Nobody did.
Sam
started off gangbusters. He played his
8777 and made a full house (board of 9878Q),
and scooped a huge pot. Soon after that
he picked up a real hand, As2s35, and
scooped a monster pot. He won a few pots,
here and there, during the four hours
that followed, but he made eight rebuys,
and went home broke.
Many players, when they first play Omaha
high/low, see that they get four cards
(which equates to six hold’em hands),
and think that they can play looser than
hold’em. A good rule of thumb to remember
is that the more cards you’re dealt (in
a game), the fewer hands you should be
playing.
An
Omaha hand where all the cards are working
together is much more valuable than four
scattered cards. If we look at the two
hands cited above (8777 and As2s35), we
can see some reasons why this is the case.
The
first hand is a trash hand. Of the six
card combinations, four are duplicates.
Additionally, it is hard to scoop a pot
when you hold middle cards. In any high/low
game, you should be aiming to take the
whole pot – not half a pot. Contrast the
first hand with As2s35 – four cards that
work together that can make many nut lows,
a nut flush, and nut straights. The second
hand is a powerhouse (in Omaha high/low),
while the first hand is a piece of cheese.
So
the next time you play Omaha, remember
what your mother told you – patience is
a virtue. Fold may have four letters,
but it is not a four-letter word.
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