Tag Archives: suited

Omaha High Point System

April 26, 2020   Personal game   No comments

Omaha poker has lot of similarities with Texas Holdem poker. In Holdem poker you have two player’s card and five community card. In Omaha poker you have four player’s card and five community card. So you have nine cards in total to make your hand in Omaha poker. When you are making your hand of five cards the rule is that you have to use two cards from your hand and three cards from the community card to make your best hand. In Texas Holdem poker you can make your hand any way you like. You may not even use any of your two cards while making the best hand.

With five community cards and four player’s card there are many cards to choose from and many high combination can be made in Omaha high point poker. Here straights and flushes are common occurrence. Many times full houses too get beaten. So starting hand is important in High Omaha poker. You need to wait for the flop if you have a reasonably good hand. You can go ahead and play with a hand with Ace and wait for the flop to open. If your hand is not good you should fold rather than play and lose.

Take your time in deciding when you should raise. If you raise in the beginning of the game you have to be clear that you have a winning hand. If you raise with a medium hand there are more chances that some will have a better hand than you. If you have double suited hands your chances of winning becomes better and single suited cards are better than having unsuited cards. A straight flush is sure to win. So a starting hand is very important. Having suited cards especially aces will have better chance of making winning hands with flop and turn

The point system for high Omaha poker goes like this: Ace high flush in spades and clubs have 4 points. Ace pair-9 points and Kings pair-8 points, Ace- 2 points. When you are playing a split game it is essential to see if the hands have high cards only. To have high your hand must have ten and above and should also have two pairs or two double suits or one pair and two suited cards. If you have AS, TS, AC, QD this is high because all cards are above ten and two cards are from same suit and two are pairs. Thus the hands are qualified according to the cards you get. The points are calculated according to the value of the cards. It is understood that one should play if one has 25 points and above. If you raise you should have at least 30 points. The maximum points are 45 in a hand.

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Playing Under The Gun: A Texas Holdem Problem

April 16, 2018   Game skill   No comments

Tight Tight Tight!- The first player to act preflop in hold’em is also in the worst position at the table; before any other players at the table get to act, you have to make the first action at the table. Once you raise or call, 1-9 players, depending on how many players are at your table, get to respond to your initial action. What does this mean? When you’re under the gun, you should be much, much more selective about the hands you choose to enter the pot with. Not only do you have to act first at the start of the hand, but you have 3rd position post flop, with only the blinds to act before you. This drastically devalues a lot of potential hands that you might consider playing normally in other positions, like small pocket pairs and connected suited hands, without the safety net of position to act last or ensure the pot isn’t raised after you enter the pot.

Hand selections- At a full ring table, the hands you should be playing from under the gun are few and far between. I’d only play AA-QQ and AKs at a tight, tough game, and add JJ-99 and AKo and AQs at a weaker, wilder game. The smaller pocket pairs and connected suited hands usually won’t get to the flop cheap enough to make it worth playing, and the other big broadway hands will find themselves dominated far too often to make it worth playing. A play that many players like to make from UTG is to limp with monster hands; too many people now recognize the limp from UTG to be a monster now for it to be effective, and players may limp with hands they’d normally just fold to a UTG open. knowing that you have a monster and that their hand is well disguised. Six handed tables, which have gained popularity in recent years, provide an opportunity to play a wider selection from UTG; you can open AA-77 and AJs+, and even limping with 22-66 and connected suited hands becomes a viable option.

Variations- You may want to play a few hands other than the very tight range listed in order to keep players guessing, especially in a cash game where players tend to grind through long sessions. Instead of trying the “monster” limp, you may be more inclined to throw a speculative raising hand into your raising mix that you include into your opening range. Instead of saying, “I’m going to open every fifth connected suited hand I get UTG,” something that works with my game is to pick a solid speculative drawing hand, like J10s or 67s, or even a hand like 33, and decide that every time I’m dealt that hand UTG, I’ll open with it like I would AA/KK, and play it on the flop similarly. It adds a bit of deception to your game, and makes it harder for people to play you straightforwardly with your UTG raises.

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