One of the most important things to learn when approaching Omaha is the importance of hand selection. Playing the right hands in Omaha is extremely important and being able to determine hands that are valuable and worth playing from those that are not can be very difficult, even for seasoned players. For new Omaha players, sticking to the best hands and looking for hands that have similar attributes can go a long way toward helping them stay out of trouble. There are hands in Omaha that can be deceptive and look like good hands but, really, are terrible.
The first thing that you should know when approaching Omaha poker, are the top ten hands. Similarly to when you first started playing Texas Hold’em and you memorized, hopefully, the top ten hands as hands that you should always be playing and avoid playing too many other hands, you should do the same in Omaha. The top ten hands in Omaha does vary slightly depending on the number of players at a table but, assuming you are playing with more than one opponent, the top hands in order of strength are: AxAyJxTy or some combination where you get two different flush draws followed by AAKK, AAQQ, AAJJ, AATT, AA99, AAxx, JT98, KKQQ, and KKJJ. In these hands, you are looking for them to have two different flush possibilities but they are amazing hands regardless and should always be played.
Unfortunately, the difference in these hands in terms of probability to win is extremely narrow. Unlike in Texas Hold’em where the advantage that aces has over another phenomenal hand like queens is massive, the advantage the AAJT has over AAKK is negligible. In fact, if you are playing against a single opponent, their position in overall hand rank is reversed.
Some hands in Omaha can be deceptively poor, especially when you have had the majority of your experience playing Texas Hold’em on Full Tilt poker. For example, the worst hand in Omaha is 2222, because the best you can make with the hand is a pair of twos and whatever you might be able to scrounge together from 3 cards on the board. Having quads or three of a kind in your hand is a very bad thing, as it greatly limits the number of possibilities that you can create with the hand. For someone who is used to playing Hold’em, looking at a hand of quads would probably make your stomach jump and you would be rubbing your hands together ready to make a fortune but, in Omaha, you’re almost certainly drawing dead and have no shot at all of winning the pot.
Playing the right hands and avoiding hands that are deceptive in their strength in Omaha is extremely important. For players that are not well versed in the intricacies of advanced hand selection, sticking to the top hands or a slightly broader range is vital and avoiding hands that look good in Hold’em will go a long way to keeping your stack in front of you.