Best Starting Hands for Pot Limit Omaha
In Pot Limit Omaha there are a massive amount of different starting hands. With four hole cards, the combinations seem to be endless. There are a lot of very good starting hands and even more bad ones. There really is not any starting hands that are dominate before the flop. Unlike Texas Holdem, you pretty much have to hit the flop in order to have the best hand. The reason being is because in Pot Limit Omaha, you cannot be anybody off a hand before the flop. With that said, most players will be calling the bet that you can make. At that point, when those first three cards are dealt you better have hit the best part of it or you are probably beat.
Hand selection is very important in Pot Limit Omaha. If you do not have good cards, there is no sense in wasting your money. If you are going to be a profitable player, you do have to be able to select your hands. At the same time, Pot Limit Omaha is a very big post flop game. You can afford to play more hands and see more flops because there is just so much going on. The problem comes in when you start playing trouble hands and just simply bad hands hoping to catch a miracle.
Strong Omaha Starting Hands
As mentioned before, there are not any hands that will be a huge favorite in this game before the flop. You are rarely going to see any heads up action and there will always be a lot of hands. If you are going to win you will need to hit. With that said, you are looking for hands that work together. The more you can have going for you the better. If you have cards that are close together and high, then you probably have a pretty strong starting hand.
Many people like to argue about what hand is the best possible starting hand in Pot Limit Omaha. While a lot of experts say that AAKK double suited is the best possible starting hand, others will tell you that AA10J double suited is the best possible starting hand. The fact is that it really does not matter what you start with in Omaha, because it all depends on what cards come on the board. Still, you can see what makes these hands strong starting hands. There are set, flush and straight possibilities with hands like those. Anytime you have a double suited ace with cards that work together, you have a good starting hand. Unless you do have the Ace with your suited cards, the flush cards are nothing but trouble cards that can lose you a lot of money.
Playable Omaha Starting Hands
Pretty much any hand that works in sequence is playable in Omaha. While it is much better to have high cards than low cards - in Omaha it's still acceptable to play hands like 678A with the ace and another one of your cards being the same suit. There is a lot of combinations there if the flop hits you right. Playing two pocket pairs such as 4455 is acceptable however, that could be the type of hand to get you in trouble. You have a 1/4 chance of hitting a set on the flop, but there is also a chance that you could hit a set that is not the best set. Somebody could hit a higher set, which will cost you money.
Omaha Hands to Fold
Hands that you want to fold in Omaha are the ones that do not have many possibilities. There is no sense in playing hands where you will need to get very lucky to in. If you were going to do that, then you might as well go play blackjack. If you have a pair of Kings or Aces, then you better have other cards that work together in some way with those pairs. If not, then you really do not have a great hand and should probably fold to any raise.