Poker News

Sam Mudaro the Omaha Guru

If you play Omaha H/L you have probably heard your peers state you should play 4-cards that work together. There is no doubt that 4-cards working together is better than 3-cards working together. Statistically we will be dealt 3- cards working together more often that 4. Are these 3-card combinations worth playing?

Omaha H/L starting hands may be classified into Low, Middle and High drawing hands. I set up these simulations to ignore the effect of gaps between the cards by only looking at connected cards. I classified the hands into non-suited (NS), doublesuited (DS), and triplesuited to segregate the effect of flush draws. I ran each combination 2 million times to ensure each 3 card combination would be thoroughly evaluated with a random fourth card. Lets take a look at the results for two low hands.

If you are dealt A-2-3 you obviously have a very powerful starting hand regardless of your fourth card. How your hand is suited or non-suited does not affect your win percentage by more than 2%. Your net win however fluctuates more that 20% or over $4.00 per hand on average. Moving on to the 2-3-4 the drop is dramatic. The win percent is nearly cut in half while the net win per hand drops to less than one tenth! This reinforces both the power of the Ace and the advantage of drawing to the nut low. Should you play the 2-3-4? It depends on what your fourth card is, how many people have entered the pot and if you get to see the flop.

Let’s now take a look at the other extreme: three high card starting hands.

Here again we see that the best hand is the one drawing to the nuts. The flush draw is more important when playing high card connectors. The double suited (DS) hand is more than 2 times as profitable as either the non or single suited variety. Three high cards without the all-powerful Ace are just not worth playing. I should point out that each of these hands, except for the Q-K-A do not have a shot at the low regardless of the fourth card. In fact if your fourth card is a low card it is actually detrimental. You are hoping your fourth card is either an Ace or another high card enabling you to make the nut straight or give you a shot at a second high flush.

Let’s now take a look at the three middle hand types.