Pot-Limit Omaha/8

By Wesley R. Young

For those of you thinking about taking a shot at pot-limit Omaha/8, here are a few strategies and points that must be considered. Everything discussed here is with the assumption you are a good limit Omaha/8 player. If you are not a good limit player, immediately abandon the idea of playing pot-limit unless the money you are using is purely discretionary. In my experience, this is the most brutal and unforgiving poker game available at high stakes today. Even if you are a good limit player, I recommend starting at a much lower buy-in than you are used to playing until you can handle the differences between limit and pot-limit Omaha/8.

By now you know that most of the profit you make in Omaha/8 is from the mistakes of your opponents and playing hands that offer good scoop potential. This is magnified to a great degree when playing pot-limit, and when you add having a made hand with a redraw to a better hand you have covered just about everything of importance. Because of the nature of pot-limit, the pot can quickly become very large and you can lose a great deal of money on drawing hands. Here are the three biggest mistakes, other than poor starting hand selection, I see players make. The first is calling large bets with only a draw to half the pot, the second is raising with only three players in the pot with only a low hand and the third is calling bets with second and third best hands with no real chance to improve to the best hand. Because of the great possibility of being quartered with a low hand, when less than four players are contesting the pot, every dollar you put in the pot may only return seventy-five cents.

I have put together a short list of rules to live by when playing pot-limit Omaha/8. If you don’t live by these rules, you surely will die by them.

• Only play starting hands that offer scoop potential, including high only hands.
• This is a game of scoops and redraws.
• Don’t draw to a low only hand against a made high hand.
• Be careful to not trade a dollar for seventy-five cents very often.
• Be patient and let your opponents make mistakes.
• Don’t lose much money with second best hands. Wait for the best possible hand to get most of your money into the pot.