Starting Hands in PLO
It’s not Hold Em
Choosing which starting hands to play in Pot limit Omaha can be a tricky business. In Hold Em you have your 2 cards and they fall pretty much into simple categories, from monster hands such as AA,KK, QQ. Good hands like TT, AQs. Marginal Hands like KQo, 55, speculative suited connector hands like 87 suited.
Choices, choices
Omaha however you have 4 starting cards, only 2 of which can make up your final hand. This means you have 6 possible combinations of starting cards to choose from. For those interested in stats this can be written as 4C2, which in plain English ,means you have 4 items from which to choose 2 = 4×3/2 =6. Don’t believe me? 4 starting cards let’s label them A B C D for easiness. It’s easy to see that AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD are the 6 possible final hole card combinations.
Get all your cards working together
It’s not a major leap to see therefore that very strong starting hands in Omaha are ones where all these 6 cards are working in combination. A hand like K-Q-J-T double suited is a great hand in Omaha. with such a hand there are several ways for you to hit the flop hard, having nut straight potential, high flush potential (though you may need to tread carefully if it’s a non nut flush draw) and possible top two pair hands also. Picture a flop of K Q 2 for where it hits your suit, you are in great shape with such a flop with your straight draw, top 2 pair and flush draw all working for you. There’s not too many likely hands you are going to be an underdog to on such a flop.
Be choosy, but not too choosy
Of course K-Q-J-T double suited is a premium drawing hand, but lesser drawing hands such as 9-8-7-6 single suited or even 3 cards working together like J-T-9-x are often playable pre-flop as well, in particular from position. Playing these and mixing in some other borderline hands like 8s-8d-6d-6c can make it hard for your opponents to get a read on your play, and making life difficult for your opposition in any form of poker is imperative.
Don’t throw your money away with trash hands
Hands to watch out for, particularly for Hold Em players looking to learn Omaha are single paired hands with little or nothing else going for them. Hands such as Th-Ts-6h-2c might look reasonable to an Omaha newbie poker player, but you have only one good(ish) starting combination out of all 6 cards. Playing a hand like that is throwing money away. Not only are you looking at a slim chance to hit the flop. Even if you do hit your Ten your hand could still be outdrawn or disaster could strike and you could run into a bigger set and end up losing your entire stack with a hand that should never have been played in the first place.
Get set to hit the nuts
If you are going to play hands with bare set draw potential then at least make sure that it’s hands that when they do actually hit the flop that you can be confident that it’s the nut set you’re holding. So a hand like Kh-Ks-6h-2c while it’s still not great is far more playable than Th-Ts-6h-2c.
Wipe the smile off your opponents face when low cards hit
Other nice starting hands to have are two high double suited pairs, like Ks-Kd-Jc-Jd, A-A-8-7 (single or better again double suited). For the latter imagine hitting a flop of 6-5-x with a nut flush draw. You have a massive hand that your fellow players will have difficulty putting you on. In fact it’s one of the big plusses in Omaha for a good player, in Hold Em your opponents will often (usually correctly) put you on good cards, so when a raggedy flop hits they know that more often than not it’s not one that favors you, in Omaha if you are raising with enough frequency, they can’t be anywhere near as confident that that is the case.
