Poker News

Sam Mudaro the Omaha Guru

This week I examine the kinds of hands that win when a flop consisting of connected cards hits the board. I will look at low connectors such as A-2-3, middle connectors 7-8-9 and high connectors AK- Q. I will also examine the effect of triple suited (TS), double suited (DS) and nonsuited (NS) flops and their effect on winning high only, low only and scooped pots.

For this analysis I ran each of the flops through 2,000,000 simulations and took an average from all ten players to eliminate the effect of playing style. The Win Percents represent how often you will see someone win with a high only, low only or scoop with the particular flop. In other words given a flop of A-2-3 you will see the pot scooped 35% of the time.

Lets take a look at the two low flops first.

One measure of how effective a hand is lies in its ability to scoop a pot. When you scoop the pot you win both the high and low all by yourself without having to split. Here we can see the less suited the flop, the more we scoop. That may sound a little strange at first. When the flop comes rainbow, the chances of making a flush are less. This translates into winning more hands with your low straight. You will lose less often to a flush or higher flush. This is further exemplified by looking at the high only pots. With more of a suit out there the more likely a flush will be made.

Turning our attention to the high connectors, the effect on the high only pots is just the opposite. As more of a suit hits the flop your chance of winning the high only decreases. This may sound bad at first but it is actually a good thing! Here is what’s happening. There are less low only winners. It must come runner, runner low and no Ace to even have a shot at the low. Now look at the scoop column.

The percentages have gone up substantially over the A-2-3. When the lows don’t get there the high has a better chance of scooping. All the figures for the J-T-9 are lower in the high only column then those for the A-KQ, except for the scoop column. Remember, there is always a high. As this flop develops you will usually see check, check around the table. Here is a tip. The first person to bet usually wins the pot. The reasons for this are fodder for another article.

Moving on to the middle connectors. When you see a flop like this it may help both low and high players alike. Somebody holding A-2 would love thefirst hand here. If you happen to be fortunate enough to be holding something like A-2-3- 4, you are guaranteed a piece of the pot. There are very few guarantees in Omaha H/L. On the other hand if you are holding 9-T-J-Q you have a lock on the nut high straight but not the pot. Yes there is an exception if you are holding the aforementioned cards and they happen to be of the same suit and the flop is 6-7-8 of the same suit you have a lock on the high. In fact you will scoop the high. Other than the straight flush you may loose to 4 of a kind or a full house. As the rank of the connectors increase so does your scoop potential. Conversely your High only potential decreases and well as your low potential.

If you take the percentages provided above and divide them by ten (10), you will get an idea of how often you will win with a flop of this type. For example if the flop comes 8-9-T NS and you are holding some low cards you will get the low only side less that 3/4 of a percent.

So what have we learned? If you are looking at a flop of connectors, the higher the connectors the more likely the pot will be scooped. The lower the connectors the least likely the pot will be scooped. High hands have a greater propensity to scoop. Next time I will take a look at which high hands win with these flops.

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