Having an eight-high flush draw adds little to your starting hand. Having the nut flush draw (Ax of a suit) or second nut flush draw (Kx) can make a hand playable. Thus, having suited cards (or, better, being double-suited) is a useful addition to any Omaha hand.īut not any suited cards – if you play Omaha for any length of time you will see players staying to the river with the eight-high flush (and nothing else) losing to the nut flush or the second nut flush. Why? About 53% of the time, there will be three cards of one suit on the board. Winning low limit Omaha players see between 10 – 15% of the flops. Most low limit Omaha players see 50% (or more) of the flops. One of my mantras in Omaha is, “When in doubt, fold.” When you have four random cards that do not meet the criteria, it’s an easy fold. When your starting hand meets the three criteria listed above, you should play the hand. By playing hands that have a good chance of flopping the nuts or nut draws you will maximize your chances of winning pots. Similarly, flopping the nuts is great but if you don’t have any redraws you may find yourself with a losing hand on the river. Then if you lose one draw you still have another. Having the nut low draw is good having the nut low draw and the nut flush draw is better. The third underlying concept is having multiple means of winning a pot. But it makes a world of difference in the playability of the two hands: the first hand is a marginal starting hand while the second hand is a solid starting hand. There is not much of a difference between the two hands. Note that the first hand can make two combinations of this (A2345 & 56789) while the second hand has four combinations that have this (A2345, A2345, A2345, and 34567). A straight with the nut low is a good hand.

However, straights usually do not win in Omaha – flushes or full houses predominate (see the discussion under Suitedness below). The first hand can make three high straights while the second hand can make only one. The first hand has one way of making a wheel the second hand has three.

3456 7 ( not a nut hand – but will also have nut low)

Starting hand values poker youtube