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Omaha HiLo could be the next value game

One of the very first games that I played in online poker was Omaha HiLo. I had read Ray Zee’s excellent book and with a little basic knowledge I was better than all the players on my table at $3-$6 limit. I was making decent money and about $15/hour but it wasn’t enough to play full-time and the higher limits simply didn’t exist at that time so the experiment ended.

But I have recently been watching the Omaha HiLo games at the lower stakes and it is blatantly obvious to me that the players at the lower levels still do not know the basics even in full ring games. In Omaha HiLo then there is little value in only playing hands that can go one way.

Actually before I move on then I feel that it is only fair to point out that Omaha HiLo is played with four cards exactly the same as conventional Omaha with the one distinguishing feature being that the best high hand only takes half the pot and the best low hand takes the other half. In the event of there being no qualifying low hand then the best high hand takes the whole pot!

For a low hand to be a qualifying low hand then it must be eight or lower. So on a flop of K-Q-J then no possible qualifying low hand can be made as you have to use two cards from your own hand and two from the board in Omaha. So what this means is that a hand like K-K-Q-Q double suited has far less value in Omaha HiLo than it does in conventional Omaha.

Anyone who has this hand can only make a high hand and so that means that they would often be only playing for 50% of the pot at best. Now compare the K-K-Q-Q double suited to a hand like Ad-Kc-Qc-2d. To novice Omaha HiLo players then this hand looks inferior.

But the hand can make the nut low with the A-2 and can make possible straights and flushes for high. Or how about the following hand Ad-2c-3d-5c! This hand can make all sorts of qualifying low hands and can also make a low straight and also has flush potential. Hands that can make both high and low hands are called “scoop” hands because hands that win both the high and the low are said to have “scooped” the whole pot in Omaha HiLo.

Many novice players also overvalue hands with A-2 combinations. This is the next most common mistake of novice Omaha HiLo players. An A-2 is fine because it can make the nut low but you could be trying for 25% of the pot if someone else has another A-2 or your hand gets counterfeited at some stage.

Omaha HiLo catches out a lot of unwary players who first learn how to play poker and who take up this form of poker and this is why there will still be value at the low-stakes games. Simple poker concepts like the ranking of poker hands and qualifying hands and identifying such things often escapes new players to this form of poker.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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