Hi Omaha folks,
I've started becoming interested in Omaha High lately, in part because I was introduced to it recently by my Friday night poker group, so I've been reading some stuff online and playing around at the penny tables on Stars. Any advice/words of wisdom for starting out at this level?
Thanks.

Read in the Omaha Forum about all hand analyzed by myself, Bundy, simo, and bdc....i havent played in a lonnnggg time, but we had some good discussions awhile ago

Don't bluff. Be patient. At these limits there is no need to get fancy.....AT ALL. Play solid hands and learn what are hands that look pretty, but don't play worth a darn.

To be honest, I'm beginning to second-guess the long term profitability of this game. Seems that all us regulars are losing, no matter what style we play. I'm tight, Simo's loose, and bud and biglebowski fall somewhere in between. What's the common thread? None of us can win...................I just don't know anymore.

How do you win at this game? You have to figure out how to hold up your 70/30's the full 70% of the time, there are so many coinflips in this game where you're correct to get it in as 60/40, or 40/60, etc, etc, that luck plays a huge factor in it.

When you're running well, it's good, obv. When you're the one who can't fade a draw or can't catch a card when you need it, there can be a LOT of frustrated, hopeless days.

Well that doesn't sound too promising....

Is the prevalence of coinflips and 60/40 hands really much different from playing NLHE? Coinflips play a huge role in NLHE, especially in tournament play. Or is the issue that because draws play a much bigger role in Omaha than in NLHE, it's more common to have opponents draw out on you when you don't have the absolute nuts?

In NLHE, a sample size of 100k hands isn't enough to give you a sense of your true winrate.

In PLO I would say you need over 200k.

You can have sessions where you lose 7 buyins, and then other sessions where you win 10.

It's not even that you don't have the "absolute nuts". There are many times when you will flop the absolute nuts, and there will be a guy stuffing it in with a combo draw to beat you (say you flop a straight and the guy has a set and flush draw) - both guys are right to get it in there, and it's pretty much just fate from that point on. Most times in holdem (cuz you obv have ½ as many cards) when the money goes in, you're 80/20 or vice versa (eg. overpairs). In tournaments, yes - coin flips are inevitable due to rising blinids, but in a cash game, I think they should be a lot less frequent, if you're playing properly rolled.

I think we all have quite a few holes in our games as well. I could not count on my fingers and toes the bonehead plays I have made that have cost me buyins. Over 20K, 50K, 100K hands that is a lot of BB/100. I think these levels are beatable over the long run, but not at a huge BB/100 rate.

The -7 buyin sessions I seem to have -- when do these +10 buyin ones happen that you speak of??

I think they are very beatable for large numbers.

The problem is that variance is such that it can take months and years to regress to the mean. One of my mates just came off the back of a 40k hand breakeven stretch then won 25 buyins in 10k hands playing NLHE.

Now scale that to PLO where the variance is far, far higher. I think the 200k hand figure I stated is a large underestimate in reality.

Not sure actually. I assume they exist though.



I'd actually like to point out that I've played less than 10k hands of PLO since April. Which is pretty pathetic.

Tell your buddy I am 3/8's of the way there. Just played my 15Kth hand this month and I am -.39BB/100 = -$27.80. I rarely go 20-30 minutes without a buyin swing so that's pretty break even to me. Same thing if I was up that amount though. Feeling good though....

What stakes are you guys playing?

So far I'm not hearing much in the way of words of widsom...

Me and lebowski are at $25plo, Bundy and simo play $50 for the most part.

So what does that translate to, .10/.25 and .25/.50?

ya

As far as reading goes, the PLO section in Super System II by Lyle Berman is pretty good.

One thing I'm noticing: players at .01/.02 really overplay NLHE hands in PLO...

the most important thing in these games is aggression. this forces other players to misread your hand strength a lot. always a good idea to play a flopped straight safe until the turn unless theres lots of action of course. but really you just have to keep pounding and you will have people calling against you drawing dead. for example if you raise pf with a suited ace and flop a nut flush. if you raise here then weakflushes will re raise you and get it in a ton. if you just call pf then they can get away from their hand without losing a cent. if you raise pf and get re raised you should almost always be calling this because your implied odds are huge for him to give away his stack. but as these guys said, tons of variance, have to be pretty tough to play.

fyp

I played with a guy who was aggressive like this last night. He raised PF with a wide range and then played hard postflop, so you never knew where you stood against him. He very quickly ran his $2 up to $10+, but then saw his stack quickly cut in half when he ran into some better hands.

I don't have the confidence to start playing that aggressively yet, but I might start experimenting a bit. It is only .01/.02 after all...