In contrast to Texas hold’em poker, in Omaha each hand is comprised of four cards, two of which you must use in combination with three cards from the board. This means, in a 9-handed hold’em game there are 18 cards out preflop, but in Omaha there are already 36. This makes it much more likely that someone holds aces in Omaha then in hold’em and they are somehow trickier to play.
Good Aces and Bad Aces
Even with pocket aces you should care about your connecting cards in Omaha. Aces should have something to go along with, like flush or straight potential. So what you want is at least one and preferably both aces suited, and two prime cards.
Examples for good aces are:
- Ah-As-Jh-Ts
- Ah-As-Kh-Qs
A-A-5-5 are the weakest possible prime cards to go with aces. If both are suited, the hand is a lot more valuable.
I would also consider a hand like A-A-J-T better then A-A-K-K, because the power of the pairs lies in the pair of aces and not in the other pair – unless you flop a set with the subsidiary pair, which makes aces irrelevant. But as you should play both of these hands, this question doesn’t matter that much.
Bad aces like As-Ah-7c-2d are more difficult to play. With such aces, you should try to see a „cheap“ flop more often and have „hidden“ aces. A rainbow cluster of unsuited cards, even with two aces, is far from a premium hand in Omaha.
Pot Committment
Aces play best when you can get all-in preflop. It is still ok to get pot-committment. This means, no matter what flop appears, you are going all-in. So when you are short-stacked, you should always try to get committed preflop. So the question in this case is, how to get as much as possible chips into the middle preflop.
Even when your opponent will be able to fold to a bad flop, you will still be in a profitable situation.
Example:
This is a real example from short-handed PLO 0.10/0.25 cash game on pokerstars that just happened to me:
Player A under the gun raises pot to 0.85. The other players fold to me in the small blind. I have 6.25 left in my stack (Player A has more) and got dealt As-Ah-Td-2d. This is far from premium aces but it is still an easy decision to reraise pot to 2.80. The big blind folds and player A calls my reraise. So the pot is now 5.85 and I have 3.55 behind. In this situation against one opponent it will be an easy decision to go all-in no matter what flop comes. In this example the flop came Kc-5s-3c and player A called my all-in. He showed Ks-Jc-8s-8c and was actually 59 percent favourite against my hand. He cought a K on the river and won the pot.
Mark Yourself with Aces
A problem is to „mark yourself with aces“ (mostly by reraising) preflop and only get lett then 20 percent of your stack into the pot. This is often a bad play because now the opponent can call and play the rest of the hand profitably because he knows that you have aces.
Example: You reraised with As-Ac-Tc-2d out of position and your opponent called. The flop appeared 8-7-5 rainbow. What would you do? Even if you are ahead, if your opponent has a pair, he has about 40 percent equity against your aces.
On the other side, you also give your opponent the chance to outplay you, if the flop looks scarry.
So nothing worse then make a big reraise with aces and not being committed.
If you end up seeing a flop with aces you are often in a guessing situation: „You need to walk the fine line between punishing your opponent and avoiding disaster.“ (Sam Farha)
There are different opinions about how much of your stack size you have to get into the middle to make it correct to mark yourself with aces. This also depends on different factors:
- the strength of your aces
- the likelihood of a raise behind
- the number of players you should be able to knock out
- whether „fake aces“ are possible for you
As a rough guideline, I would say that it is enough to get about 25 percent of the stack into the pot preflop to make the play correct.
Fake Aces
For the reason of deception you should sometimes mark yourself with „aces“ when you don’t have them. For example you could reraise with Tc-9d-8c-7d.
The problem with this play is, that your opponent will have the „real“ aces on his own and it will give him the chance to get pot-committment.
So you only should do this play with a hand that plays well against aces, that means double suited and well coordinated hands that are not containing an ace.
Playing against Marked Aces
When your opponent marks himself with aces, you should find out how good your hand plays against aces. For example a hand like Ad-Kc-Ts-9s plays poorly against aces because it is dominated.
According to Jockusch pocket kings can call up to about 15 percent of the effective stack size. T-9-8-8 single suited can be played for about 25 percent of the stack. Medium wraps should mostly call.
To show that effect I calculated some winning odds for some starting hands in versus situations with omahacalculator.com:
- As-Ad-Jd-Ts (75%) vs. Ks-Kd-Qs-Js (25%)
- As-Ad-Jd-Ts (61%) vs. Kh-Kc-Qh-Qc (39%)
- As-Ad-Jd-Ts (58%) vs. 5h-6h-7c-8c (42%)
- As-Ad-7s-2s (52%) vs. 5h-6h-7c-8c (48%)
Of course, these examples are very constructed, but I hope they give a feeling for certain hands against aces.
Playing after the Flop
The starting point of playing aces after the flop the question of how many opponents are still in the game and how is the „texture“ of the flop: How much do the flop cards coordinate with your cards and how big is the likelihood that they hit your opponents hands?
Example: You have A-A-x-x (4 suits) and the flop comes 9-T-J with two of a suit. There is a good chance that an opponent already has a straight or at least a big draw against you.
Example: You have A-A-x-x (4 suits) and the flop comes 2-7-Q (3 suits). This is a very „raggy“ flop. There are no flush or straight draws which can be made on the turn and two low cards which are less likely to have made a set. The only real dangers are trip queens (more likely if your opponent raised preflop) or two pair. On this flop you can feel confident to bet out with aces, but still, if you encounter resistance, you have to consider two pair or a set.
With a draw as a backup the aces get much stronger. Let’s say you have Ah-Ad-Th-9s and the flop comes 8h-5h-2d. The additional flush draw makes it much easier to play the hand in an aggressive fashion. Even when you are running against a set, you still have a flush draw as backup. And on the other side, a possible straight draw with 6-7 gets worse, because you take some outs away (9h and 4h).
Your postflop strategy also depends on how well your aces are desguised. If you limp in from early position preflop with aces, catch an ace on the flop and someone else flops a smaller set, you can win a big pot. In opposite, if you are marked with aces…
Video
Antonius vs. Dwan in heads-up PLO cash game with a 394’000$ pot (Antonious has hidden aces)
Further Reading
- Sam Farha, Storms Reback: Farha on Omaha: Expert Strategy for Beating Cash Games and Tournaments. 2007.
- Herbert Okolowitz, Wladimir Taschner: Mastering Pot-Limit Omaha. The modern aggressive approach. 2014.
- William Jockusch: Pot-Limit Omaha. Understanding Winning Play. 2009.
- Fred Sulayman: Streets of Omaha. PLO-Cashgame. Professionelles Poker.
Hacking for Ka 