People often ask me what book I'd recommend to a novice Omaha player. There are other useful books, but my normal reply is: the Bible. Omaha does have the tendency to drive beginning players to prayer, but it really need not be so.

Omaha is a game of nut hands, so as hands unfold, practice reading what the nut low hand is. Then start thinking of your low hand in relation to the nut low. It's not important to know how low your low is, what matters is how low your low is in comparison to the nut low.

Why play Omaha?... This website is called Play Winning Poker. While some newbies reading this Introduction will be hard pressed to do it right away, the aim is to win at Omaha -- not have fun, or even to irritate yourself. Frankly, at lower limits, winning at Omaha is easy, if you really are trying to win because most Omaha players play terribly, much worse than they play Holdem (which is not so good to start with).

In many ways, Omaha is mathematically simplistic. If you play only good starting hands and your opponents see fit to play almost every hand, and don't care whether they play for one bet or for four, soon the math of that will work in your favor. Omaha is the best game to make money, especially when you have a small bankroll. $3/6 Omaha requires only about half the bankroll of $3/6 Holdem, but your hourly win rate should be higher.

Omaha is a game of massive edges; Holdem is a game of smallish edges. Low limit Omaha games are the easiest poker games to beat -- if you play properly. Most players do not have the ability, or more important, the desire to play properly in low limit Omaha games. If you are playing to win, generally Omaha games are the place to play because they are cheaper (less bankroll), more profitable (higher hourly win rates) and have weaker players playing much more poorly. It's deadly dull tho. What winning loose-game Omaha is not is a barrel of laughs.

Omaha is a game of non-random accuracy... One thing to understand about Omaha is that since you get a higher percentage of your final hand sooner, your hands are generally much more defined than in Holdem or Stud. After all, 7/9ths of your hand is known on the flop. Then, when it comes to the betting, the likely outcome of an Omaha hand is often precisely known. A player with twenty, or twelve, or four outs has that many outs.

Omaha is a game of information. Holdem is a game of uncertainty. That's how they were designed! Loose game Omaha is about ending up with the nuts. Loose game Holdem is far more shadowy and difficult.

Many players seem to draw the wrong conclusions from the greater certainty that is part of Omaha. They think because their nut flush on the turn gets beaten on the river when the board pairs that Omaha has some mystical randomness to it. The opposite is true. There are a precise number of cards that pair the board, and make you lose. There are a precise number that do not pair the board, and make you win. On the turn, if you have the nut flush, with no cards in your hand paired on the board, and your opponent has a set, with no other cards paired on the board, there are exactly forty possible river cards. Exactly ten pair the board to make you a loser. Exactly thirty do not pair the board and make you the winner. That's it -- pure, simplistic math. In the long run, you win three out of four. This is known. This is Omaha.

Do not let yourself be confused by irrelevant concepts. What matters in any form of poker, but particularly in Omaha, is the probability of winning -- not who is temporarily in the lead. Whether you flop a made hand or a draw or a backdoor draw is irrelevant, what matters are your prospects, your probabilities, of having the winning hand on the river. What counts is how many cards, in what combinations, make you the winning hand. Know how many cards make your hand, and then know that in the long run you will win pots in the mathematically appropriate percentage: if you have x% chance of making the winning hand, you better be getting at least the correspondingly appropriate pot odds.

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