PL Omaha - tonight's ARL leg

dtm75

In preparation for leg II of the ARL league and to hopefully improve my position I've been playing some (half a dozen or so) Omaha, PL, NL and Hi-Lo in the Sit and Go lobby with mixed success. Appreciate it's a small sample set and I expect practice is, as always the key.

Is the tournament dynamic over a 6 max sit and go different? A lot more loose? 4 and 5 betting pre with double suited double pairs, or completely connected hands 10, J, Q, K or are people still pretty much calling stations to see a flop and re-assess?

Any Omaha gurus who could give me 3 top tips so I can finish higher than 76th?

Cheers - Dan

Tikay10

Raising pre in the early Levels of an Omaha Tourney will not result in getting players to Pass, you'll just inflate the pot to unmanageable standards, & there is NO HAND in Omaha that is a strong favourite multi-way pre-flop. Once you see a multi-way flop in Omaha, you need to hit it very hard, 2 pair will rarely be enough.

If you can succed in getting it Heads-Up pre, that's a different matter, but it's pretty hard to do in the early stages.

dtm75

Sounds tricky to assess how strong hands are!  Even in my limited exposure saw A flush beaten a straight flush and quads over quads - am guessing this is fairly* common place

I fear I'll be languishing in the bottom 20%...again

Is there any quick mathematical assignment I can do to assess strength of my hand? 2 pair in hold 'em is about 45/1 yeah? But with 6 combinations pre; does this literally shrink to about 9/1 i.e. not very rare? 

Can I apply a rudimentary divide by 6 rule?

Tikay10

Hard to answer that really, dtm.

2 pair could be good, but if you look at any 5 card Board, in a multi-way pot, & there is a possible straight or possible flush out there, it's likely someone has it.

And again, (multi-way), if the Board pairs, there's a very good chance that someone will have the boat.

Remember, always, that in Hold'Em, we have in our hand, one 2-card hand.

In 4 card Omaha, we have in our hand SIX two card hands. 

As a good basic rule, try to restrict your range to cards that work well together, &, ideally (not always possible) no dangler.

If you have TWO danglers, your hand is as near as useless, even if you have a A-A + 2 unconnected or suited danglers.

Even "one-gapped connected" cards can be good. If you can flop wraps & super-wraps, particularly if drawing to the UPPER end, & with alternative "improvers", then you can start getting seriously aggro. Wraps are the strongest flopped hands we can have in Omaha.

Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of playing A-K or A-Q as we would in NLHE. In Omaha, it's a pile of poo.

dtm75

In summary...

- Avoid one dangler, definitely two. 

- Big slick and AQ don't have equivalent strength? Appreciate this is a generalisation, would imagine double suited Ad Qd 9h 8h isn't so bad?

- Wraps and super wraps!? Not heard this terminology before? Am guessing it's nothing to do with delicious mexican snacks or flour tortillas...?

Cheers for advice - much appreciated...

Dan

Tikay10

1) DEFINITELY avoid double-danglers.

2) No, big slick & A-Q are NOT the equivelant hand in Omaha, they have no real strength at all. A-K or A-Q suited is just part of a starting hand, but you'd need something to support it, perhaps Q-J or J-T of another suit, so we now have a multitude of ways to improve. We almost certainly CANNOT win unless we improve, of course.

3) Wraps & super-wraps?

I'd be here all day explaning that - google is your friend. In simple terms, on a flop of, say, 8-9-x, if you hold 6-7-10-J you have a full "wrap", & lots of cards hit you hard.

Add to that if you have a double-suited starting hand, & hit 4 to the flush on the flop, you have a super-wrap, & myriad of ways to win this coup. 

A super-wrap can have as many as 26 or more outs after the flop, so you can actually be FAVOURITE against the flopped nuts. The flopped nuts, unless they have improvers, are called "the temporary nuts" in Omaha, as it rarely holds up.