Omaha Help

Bonapar813

New to Omaha

Not sure Hand Ranking?

Played a Pot Limit Omaha £1.10 Sit and Go.

I lost both hands and don't know why.

Here are the Hand:

Hand History #450532388

My Hole Card
Kd 3d 9d 8d

Flop
9c Qd 2d

Turn
3c

River

5h

Vilain: 9h 7c Qs 7h

Win Two Pairs, Queens and 9s

Hand History #450533856

My Hole Card 6h 6d 10h 6c

Flop
3c Jd 8s

Turn
Qh

River
Ah

Kc Ac 2h 2c
8c 10d Qc 7h

Win Two Pairs, Queens and 8s

If anyone could shed some light will be greatful, I thought I had a Flush the first hand and Trips on the second and both should beat 2 pairs.

Thanks in advance

EvilPingu

Because you have to use exactly 2 of the 4 cards in your hand, best 5 card hand wins.

Therefore, in the first hand, you have Two Pairs, 9s and 3s, with a Q kicker

In the second hand, you have a Pair of 6s from your hand, and you're using the A, Q and J on the board.

Both of those hands are pretty bad starting hands in Omaha, as they can't improve much - The first one has 4 diamonds in it, and you can only use 2 of them for the flush. Therefore, 2 of your outs are in your hand rather than in the deck.

Same thing in the second one - You've got 3 6s in your hand, so there's only 1 left out there. You're basically drawing to a 1 outer, as opposed to 2 if you didn't have that useless third 6 in your hand.

In Omaha, a good starting hand would be something like 5678 double suited (i.e. 2 cards of 2 different suits). With a hand like that, you have straight draws, and flush draws. The key is that your cards work well together and can improve. A hand like 2222 would be awful as you can only use 2 of them, not all 4, so you only have a pair of 2's. Also, your hand can't improve at all, as there's no 2's left in the deck as they're all your hand.

Also, 1 pair will hardly ever win in Omaha. If you call each card a, b, c and d, they have 6 hold'em hands - ab, ac, ad, bc, bd, and cd. If you have one pair, against 6 opponents in Hold'em, would you think you're winning? Probably not. So you're probably not winning in Omaha, even against 1 player. Even if your opponent is playing any old rubbish, then it's still quite likely for them to flop 2 pair or something. Same thing applies with low flushes, or the wrong end of a straight - if you have several other players in the pot, that's several lots of 6 hold'em hands - it's very likely that at least one of them has a better flush or straight.

With the 6 6 10 6 hand that you had, your 6 possible hands are:

6 6

6 10

6 6

6 10

6 6

10 6

You've got 6 6, and 10 6 - Even your pocket 6's are pretty useless here as it's a lot less likely to hit your set as you have the 3rd 6 in your hand. And 10 6 is just an awful hand. Easy fold. Pretty much anything where you have 3 of the same card in your hand is an instant fold.

Hope this helps