Omaha Hi Strategy
by PSO Staff

Omaha is not necessarily a high-low split game; you can play it as a high-only game, too. You'll find Omaha played as a high-only game in some casinos, although it is not nearly as popular as its Hi-Lo cousin.

Omaha Hi is often played pot-limit in card rooms. Betting can escalate extremely quickly in these games, and the last thing we'd ever advise a beginning player is to play pot-limit or no-limit Poker.

Much of the time, Omaha Hi makes an appearance during a major Poker tournament—the kind that takes place over a week or longer—and the game is usually played as pot-limit.

Omaha Hi is very popular in European card rooms, but in England, Ireland, and much of continental Europe, pot-limit games are the rule rather than the exception.

The mechanics of Omaha-Hi are identical to those of Omaha Hi-Lo. Each player receives four cards in his starting hand. After a round of betting, three communal cards are flopped. A betting round, a fourth communal card, and another round of betting follows. Then a fifth community card is placed on the board. A final betting round follows and the best five-card hand wins the pot. As in Omaha Hi-Lo, a player must use precisely two cards from his/ her hand and combine them with three of the community cards to form the best poker hand.

So far so good. Everything looks the same. But if you play Omaha Hi, you can expect some major differences in strategy:

Ditch low hands: Because low hands won't win a thing in this game, why play low cards? A hand like A-2-3-4 is a powerhouse in Omaha Hi-Lo, because it can easily make the best low hand and capture half the pot. But this low hand is a real dog in Omaha when it's a high only game.
Mid-range is okay: In Omaha Hi-Lo, you rarely play a hand like 9-8-7-6. If you make the best possible straight, you probably have to give up half the pot to a better low hand, and if you make the lower end of a straight, such as 8-9-10-J-Q, you face a very good chance that someone has a bigger straight. But if you're playing for high only, you never have to worry about a lower hand snatching half the pot out from under your nose.
Wrap it: When played for high, Omaha is often a game of straights and flushes. Because each player is dealt four private cards that can combine to form six distinctly different two-card combinations, making a straight or flush is not quite the rarity it is in Hold'em (where each player has only one tow-card combination to work with). Wherever there is a possible straight due to the array of communal cards, an Omaha hand is much more likely to have the right two-card combination than a Hold'em hand.

Of course, whenever the board is paired, someone may have a full house or four-of-a-kind. But beyond those possibilities, straights and flushes are the name of the game. No one can possibly make a flush without three community cards of the same suit. That's where wraps come into play. If you have four sequenced cards, or four cards with a small gap, you can make a straight in any number of ways. Here's an example of a hand that requires 'wrapped' attention.

In Omaha, you can have as many as 20 opportunities to make a straight. If you began with J-10-7-6 and the flop was 9-8-3, you'd make a straight with a queen, jack, 10,7,6,or 5. Four of those cards are in your hand, but with two more board cards to be dealt, you can expect to complete a straight more than 70 percent of the time. By comparison, in Hold'em, the maximum number of cards you can have that will complete your straight is eight.

Big Flushes: If you're going to make a flush, you may as well think big. There's nothing more frustrating than making a flush and losing to a bigger one. For obvious reasons, you'd much rather make a straight with a hand like 9-8-7-6 than a flush.¹

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