Seven Omaha Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make

Play too loose preflop. You can play more starting hands at PLO than at NLHE, and there’s the old saying “Omaha is a post-flop game”, but this does not mean you can play three hands out of four profitably. Playing more 50% of your hand without hurting your EV calls for solid skills, and anything above 60% is certainly spew. Poor starting hands miss the flop very often, and when they hit they make weak hands that can’t stand much pressure – no good.

Not being aggressive enough. Limping and calling so as to see a flop and fold if you find no help is a recipe for getting totally exploited. Sure, sometimes you want to see a cheap flop, but your overall gameplan should include a lot of raises for isolation and seizing the initiative – this lets you take down a lot of pots with cbets or second barrels. In a limped of single-raised family pot, you won’t be able to do so. Besides, raises decrease the pot-to-stack ratio, which often works in your favor.

Overestimate overpairs. This is the prototypal mistake of NLHE players coming to PLO: an high overpair – especially aces – is a strong hand in NLHE, but it is a fairly weak hand in PLO if there is nothing to go with it (like a straight or flush draw). With four cards in hand, it’s all too easy for an opponent to hit two pair, and if you go wild with overpairs, he’s going to call you off profitably since your range is so unbalanced.

Reveal your hand prematurely, especially out of position. This specifically involves making raises or reraises that let everybody know that you have aces, while there is still a good deal of money left to play. Most players still in the hand are going to call you, and you’ll generally be left with a bare overpair facing several unknown quantities. This is a great spot – for them.

Chase with non-nut draws. Pouring money into the pot while drawing dead or extremely thin is a terrible mistake; it often happens when people draw to the 2nd, 3rd or worse nut flush, while the nut flush draw is much in someone else’s range. This can also happen with dominated straight draws. Non-nut draws can be played sometimes, but they’re generally part of some combo-draw, where it is difficult for an opponent to cover everywhere. Those cases excepted, it is best to steer clear of non-nut draws.

Tilt. PLO is going to take it to a new level – like, you’re going to be seriously pissed. This is a high-variance game, and it hurts when you see donks rake pots with ridiculous holdings played as poorly as possible. The mistake is obviously keeping playing while you feel like murdering someone: you’re going to chase, to spazz and to bury yourself.

Insufficient bankroll. With the inevitable ups&downs, you need a solid bankroll to play PLO if you want to avoid going broke. Forty buyins is a sort of minimum; you can always play with less if you can deposit next month, but if injecting fresh money is not an option, you’d better choosing the smaller stakes.