Advanced Strategy General Concepts
In this section of the text, I am referring to advanced players and medium-to high-stakes games.
Common limits are $50-$100 and $ 75-$150. Many of the players are highly skilled, and to expect to have good results, you need to play very well.
If you just to cinches, don’t expect to do much better than break even. Basically, this is a game of trying to get in cheaply before the flop.
If you are putting in a lot of money early, it is usually not so much to get in money with a quality hand, but to knock out players so you have a positional advantage.
This allows you to use your poker skills later and to play against the blinds or perhaps the blinds and a weaker hand. Keeping track of the cards.
The big decision is to analyze the flop ad understand how it relates to your hand and whether you should play on.
Playing on or folding (once the flop comes) is not always as automatic as some people think.
Most people tend to play too loose games after the flop, so you get an opportunity to flop hands and play with people who are taking the worst of it.
Generally, when a lot of players take the flop, you must have the nut low draw, the nut low made with redraws, or a very strong high hand to continue.
In this game, most of the money you make is not from your skillful play; it is usually from your opponents’ poor play.
They often call and try to win the pot with a second-or third-best hand, without playing forcefully and perhaps knocking out someone else.
There is also a lot to think about in Omaha eight-or-better. In general, however, the decisions are slightly more obvious in this game than in some other forms of poker.
When you start your hand, it is usually clear-cut how to play and which is the best path to take when you play a hand out.
One of the big skill factors is understanding how the other players play their hands and playing your hand accordingly.
This makes omaha eight-or-better a lot different from most other forms of poker, where even though you play your hand based on how your opponents play, you don’t alter your betting as much.
As an example, it might be right to check and fold the nuts in Omaha eight-or-better, something that would be totally unheard of in a game like Texas holdem.
In Omaha eight-or-better, how your opponent plays can determine whether you will even enter the pot. For instance, a profitable hand against timid opponents can be a trash hand against the same number of players if they are aggressive.
Thus accurately gauging your opponents is a skill that all advanced players need to develop.
The secret of this game is to have the nuts with draws to better hands.
It is vital to add up the chances of back-door flushes, back-door straights, and miracle cards, plus the draws that you don’t expect can come to defeat you. ( General concepts.)
Your chances of winning can be reduced by as much as 10 percent – or far greater in some extreme cases – when you have the best hand but with no chance to redraw.
For example, suppose you figure that your hand has 50 percent value, assuming that there are no redraws against you.
In reality, you hand may have only 40 percent value because of the redraws. (Notice that when I say 10 percent, I mean 10 percent of 100, not 10 percent of your hand value.)
The 10 percent is just a rough figure based on poker experiences. But the point is that in multiway pots, your hand is almost never as strong as it appears to be (even when it is the nuts), because these redraws are almost always there.
Consequently, it is important to have all four cards working well together so you have back-door possibilities.
This may allow you to take some pots back or, at times, to three-quarter your opponent instead of splitting the pot.
Introduction / General Concepts / Position / Low Hands / High Hands / Your Starting Hand / Starting With Big Pairs / When You Are First In / How To Play Your Hand / Play on the Flop / When Your Have the Best Hand / Afterthought
