Poker News

Sam Mudaro is the Omaha Guru

Continuing with the concept of 4 cards working together, today I begin a series of articles covering two low cards combined with a pair. I will begin our discussion with the best possible two low cards to hold, namely the A-2.

These simulations were again run at a full table of tight players with a single player being dealt each hand a minimum of 100,000 times. The results therefore represent a summary of how the hand was played from each position in a typical $10-$20 game and not those of a mathematical calculation of probability where the assumption is usually everyone plays to a showdown.

Her are the results for A-2; For those of you not familiar with my abbreviations here they are:

DS = double suited

HS = high card suited to the pair

LS = low card suited to the pair

BS = neither card suited to the pair but they are suited to each other

NS = none of the cards are suited.

Please note that the A-2 with A-A or 2-2 are not listed as these would fall under the category of 3 of a kind. Virtually every A-2 combination with a pair is profitable.

The A-2-7-7 while not profitable is close to a break even. The red parenthesis indicates the loss was small enough that it rounded to zero. What should be immediately apparent from the chart is that a double suited hand is better than one of the three single suited pairs which in turn are better then any of the non-suited pairs.

One result in the chart surprised me. I would have guessed the A-2- 3-3 with 3 cards to a nut low would have fared better then A-2-K-K. Apparently the higher pair affords enough protection especially when there is no low to grab half the pot.

One may wrongfully assume from the above chart that a pair combined with any ace and any low card is profitable. The chart below shows the results using the same criteria for the A-3.

The story is a little different with the A-3. Almost half of the non-suited hands are now unprofitable and 3 of the back suited hands are not profitable. What is now apparent though is that indeed the middle pairs are the weakest. This makes perfect sense. The middle pairs are not as strong as the high pairs for capturing the high. The little pairs aidin completing the low and offer some protection in the form of preventing your hand from being counterfeited.

I am not sure exactly why, but do notice that the high suited, (HS) hands have fallen behind the low suited, (LS) hands. This is certainly worthy of further investigation as I may only assume you are winning larger pots when you backdoor a flush and the low does not get there. It may be repetitious but worthy of constantly pointing out. The three worst ranks contain the 7, 8 and 9. These 3 cards have been nicknamed the bandits, (as in taking your money) by a fellow writer for good reason.

Beginning with my next article, I will introduces a series of articles to be combined with the presentation of additional “4 cards working together” charts. The articles will describe how poker, any form of the game, is a series of decisions.

I will take a look at the decisions we all make, whether consciously or subconsciously and how they may affect our game.

So what have we learned? Any hand containing a pair when combined with an A-2 is worthy of play. Not all pairs when combined with two low cards are playable. This will become more obvious when we look at two low cards not containing an ace as one of the low cards.

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