The game of choice for

online poker

enthusiasts is currently No-limit Texas Hold’em but one game is threatening its popularity and that is Pot-limit Omaha, a game that is action packed, creates huge pots and is currently in its infancy so it is full of weak players!

On the surface Pot-limit Omaha looks like it would play very similarly to Hold’em but if you delve a little deeper it quickly becomes apparent that this is not the case and that the two games are indeed worlds apart. What would be the correct play in Hold’em is often completely wrong in

Omaha poker

and vice-versa.

The primary goal of Pot-limit Omaha is to win your opponent’s entire stack. You should not be overly interested in picking up small pots here and there, instead you should be looking to stack your opponent each time you contest a pot. You will pick up some small pots along the way but our main aim is to win full stacks.

Be aware that hands run much larger in Omaha than Hold’em due to the sheer number of hand combinations each player has. As each player is dealt four hole cards they can make a the equivalent of six two-card Holdem hands and by the time the river is dealt every player remaining in the pot has 60 possible five-card combinations! Two pair in Hold’em is often enough to win the hand but in Omaha even a set is often going to be in trouble and rarely a big favourite over any of your opponent’s holdings.

On the subject of hands you should only ever draw to the nuts, especially in full ring games that are being played multiway. This means King-high flushes should often find their way to the much, as should non-nut straights. If you find yourself on the river with a non-nut hand and there is a possible straight of flush out there you can almost guarantee that one of your opponents will have the nuts!

Finally, as the game plays bigger and is more volatile that its Hold’em cousin you require a larger bankroll to play from. A short-handed No-limit Hold’em player may be comfortable playing from a 30 buy-in bankroll but the equivalent Pot-limit Omaha player would need closer to 50 buy-in, though many prefer 100 to be truly comfortable.

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