Poker News

Sam Mudaro the Omaha Guru

Today let us assume you are dealt a hand that does not contain an Ace, and all of your cards are eight or higher. Should you continue with the hand or muck it? Are there any high hands worth playing that don’t contain an Ace?

For starters you have no chance at a low. I won’t bore you with the math but there are 270,725 possible 4 card-starting hands you may be dealt from a 52-card deck when not taking order into account. There are 10,626 hands, which may be dealt that do not contain an Ace, with no card greater than an 8. That is roughly 3.9% of all starting hands. After running each of these relevant hands 100,000 times and averaging the results for all starting positions I derived the following chart.

There are only 15 hands that do not have a negative net, with one hand just a little better than break even. That is less than 15 out of 10,626 or 0.14%. Nine, (9), of the hands on the list consist of two pairs. 6 are two pair, where the cards are double suited, (2PDS) and 3 are of the single suited variety, (2PSS). Each of the single suited variety contains a pair of kings and is also represented in the double suited variety. Five of the 15 hands contain a single pair, double suited, (1PDS). 11 of the 15 hands contain a pair of kings. The only hand not containing at least 1 pair is an open-ended draw, to the nut high straight, with the two high cards, (K, Q) double suited to the two low cards (J, T). It should be noted that this same hand, (T-J-Q-K), whether single suited or non-suited did not make the cut. Straight draws, at least high straight draws, need help to make them profitable. That help can be in the form of 2 pair, 1 pair or a double suited flush draw. Please note each hand above has a possible flush draw. Not a single hand containing an 8 made the list.

Except for the single, double suited straight draw, every hand contained at minimum a pair of queens.

9-T-K-K had only a $480.00 profit which when averaged out over 100,000 hands rounded down to less than a penny. This hand should probably only be played from the blinds and the button, to improve upon the average net.

So what have we learned? Of the 10,626 possible hands not containing an Ace with all cards equal to or greater than an 8, only 15 are profitable. Each and every one is double suited. Except for a single double suited, nut straight draw, each hand contains at least a pair of queens. Let me share with you, a little known Omaha secret. If yourhand does not contain an Ace and the lowest card in your hand is a 5, the chart above is essentially still correct. There are only 3 additional profitable hands, which need to be added to the chart, to render it correct. They all contain a pair of kings. Please note I did not exclude any lows with that statement. That’s a story for another article. If you send me an email I will give you the additional hands. Next time we will take a look at what happens when we include the Ace in the above analysis.

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