1. Best Pot Limit Omaha Starting Hands
2. Best Omaha Starting Hands

Omaha Hi-Lo Preflop Hand Values. There are 16,432 different starting hands in Omaha Hi-Lo Holdem (considering equivalence relations). The table on this page shows the top 5% of hands dealt, click here to see all of the hands, the page is almost 2MB so may take a while to load.

If you're a regular pot-limit Omaha player — especially if you play poker online — you're probably familiar with the five-card variant of the game in which players are dealt five cards instead of four.

• When hold'em players try pot-limit Omaha for the first time, they often play too many hands, failing to realize the need for the four cards to work together in order to create a strong starting hand.
• Keep in mind, however, that hands vary according to the facts you have at the time of making any decision. In general, in Omaha High-Low, the best hand takes the pot, so bluffing is not often helpful since the game is primarily driven by hand strength. Starting hands that are best may win both the high and low portions of the pot.
• The Best Hand While every thoroughbred Omaha player may have their own personal favorite hand, A, A, 2, 3 (double suited), is the best hand to be armed with in Omaha hi-lo.

That game otherwise plays just like regular PLO, with players using two of their hole cards along with three community cards to construct five-card poker hands.

Five-card pot-limit Omaha was one of the other versions of the game PLO expert and 888pokerAmbassdor Vivian Saliba discussed in her article 'Action Seekers: Try These Pot-Limit Omaha Variants'. One point she made there was to note how that fifth card significantly affected equities when comparing preflop starting hands, making them even closer, generally speaking, than is the case in regular four-card PLO.

Recently Saliba had a chance to experience another version of PLO popular in English casinos, six-card pot-limit Omaha. While at the 2018 888poker LIVE Festival London, the Brazilian poker pro played six-card PLO in a dealer's choice cash game. She spoke a bit about it with PokerNews'Sarah Herring.

'The equities preflop are so close, that you don't have much of an edge,' Saliba explains, noting that when that is the case your starting hand selection and how you proceed has a lot to do with the playing styles of your opponents.

When hold'em players try pot-limit Omaha for the first time, they often play too many hands, failing to realize the need for the four cards to work together in order to create a strong starting hand.

Tommy Angelo addressed the topic of starting hand selection in pot-limit Omaha in his multi-part article 'Waiting for Straighters' that focuses on preflop strategy in both no-limit hold'em and pot-Limit Omaha. See especially both 'Pot-Limit Omaha' (Episode 3) and 'Strategy Merits in PLO' (Episode 4).

When PLO players try five-card PLO for the first time, the same principle often holds as players play more hands than they should. Add one more card to that starting hand and you can imagine how that can have the tendency to make the game even looser, especially among those unfamiliar with the variant.

As Saliba explains, in her game it was indeed the case that 'players were playing actually loose preflop,' which made it prudent to 'play very tight, play with high cards [and] the nut draws.' Take a look:

Primarily an online player, 888poker Ambassador Vivian 'Vivi' Saliba has recently collected numerous live cashes including making the money in both the 2017 WSOP Main Event and 2017 WSOP Europe Main Event. Pot-limit Omaha is her favorite variant, and among her many PLO scores is an 11th place in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed Championship at the 2017 WSOP.

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Winning poker hands.

To win at Omaha poker you need to know the winning hands, and this is absolutely essential in Omaha because you need to know if you are drawing to a great hand or not. Skill comes into how you play the hand and if you don’t know if you have a winning hand or draw, you wont be able to make and call the right bets. So the first part of getting an advanced Omaha strategy in play is to remember the hand rankings below.

You start with four cards in your hand and end up with five cards on the table. The winning hand must be made up of two of the four cards in your hand and three of the five cards on the table. The hand rankings below represent that combination of two cards from your hand and three from the table.

1: Royal Flush.

For a Royal Flush you need an Ace King Queen Jack Ten all of one suit, hearts or clubs, diamonds or spades. A Royal Flush beats every other hand there is, but you won’t see one very often. Enjoy it and rake in as many chips as you can when you do.

2; The straight flush.

Second in rank five cards in sequence of the same suit, but not including the ace high. Also not a common hand but often well disguised.

3; Four of a kind.

Any four cards of the same rank, also known as quads. If there are four cards the same on the board, whoever has the highest card in their hand, such as an ace, will win. If two people have the same high card the pot will be split.

4; Full house;

To get a full house you have three cards of one value and two cards of another. In the example of 9,9,9,10,10 the rank of the three nines determines the strength of the hand. If someone else has a full house of 10,10,10,9,9 this hand wins because the 9,9,9 is lower than the 10,10,10 of the other hand.

5; The flush.

Five cards of the same suit make a flush. More than one person can have a flush. The winner is the person with the highest card making the flush.

6; Straight.

A straight is made up of any five cards in sequence but not of the same suit.

7; Three of a kind.

Best Pot Limit Omaha Starting Hands

Any three cards all of the same rank.

8; Two pairs.

Two pairs of cards. Two players can have more two pairs and the winner is determined by the person having the highest pair.

9; Pair.

Any two cards of the same value.

Best Omaha Starting Hands

10; High card.

In poker the highest card is an ace then a king and so on down the rankings. If no one makes a hand, whoever has the highest value card will win.

So now you know which hands will win the game, get out there and have a go. Playing Omaha poker is great fun and if you play well can be profitable.

If you want to play Omaha with other beginners at a low risk game, look up Boom poker club (Australia’s largest online club with well over 1000 players, with a poker jackpot of $4,000) onfacebook; or for instructions on how to enter the game email here; anish.kumar15@live.com

Note; The authors of Beginners Omaha Poker have no commercial connection to Boom poker club.

And if its Texas Holdem poker you are wanting to learn about, look at this great site; How to play Texas Holdem Poker.