Omaha HU strategy

**HollowPoint** · 07-11-2008 19:32

The new Pokeri lehti had an article about HU Omaha, by Annie Duke. Her basic advice seemed to be not to raise preflop, even in position, and maybe not on the flop either. Ok, I didn´t read it all, as it sounded stupid to me, but this was the overall picture I got from her writing.

Now I haven´t played a lot of Omaha Hu, lately I´ve been playing HU Holdem sit´n´gos, low levels, $10-20. I raise every button unless the effective stacks are low, like 20bb or less. This has been extremely profitable, I practically just keep betting in position, and using my ability to control the pot from position.

The little that I´ve played Omaha HU, I´ve used similar aggression, and won also. Well aggression is a bad word actually, I don´t think it´s so much an aggression, I just bet when I think I have the best hand, or the opponent is likely to fold. That just happens to be most of the hands...

I feel that it is suprisingly difficult to get a very good hand in HU Omaha, by that I mean a hand You would be comfertable to play OOP against a good opponent, who knows how to use his positional advantage. This would IMO lead to different approaches preflop and on the flop depending mostly on the stack sizes. The game being pot limit, the hardest thing for me has been planning the bets so that it gives me more leverage OOP. So I don´t play much raised pot´s OOP, like most of the opponets I´ve encountered do, they call every raise preflop, and fold on flop/turn too much. This has been enough to give me a profitable edge against them, but then again, my opponent´s at these leves aren´t good, or I´ve been lucky in getting the worst opponents.

Anyway, to put it short, as there are some very good Omaha players on this forum, I would like to know Your opinion on the importance/use of position and being aggressive in HU Omaha?

**Winnergambling** · 08-11-2008 20:13

Well though post.

I will write my thoughts tomorrow or so.

**Winnergambling** · 11-11-2008 05:57

First of all, I haven't see the article talked in the OP, but it sounds extremely stupid. As low as the article quality in "Pokerilehti" overall usually.

Then some general thoughts/observations about HU omaha.

First of all - all the winning mid-stakes HU players I know seem to have VPIP in the 55%-90% area. Our featured blogger, HU Omaha expert Tsagalaga plays close to 90% style playing basically every button, but not necessary raising every time. Against certain opponents he also limps and or min-raises a lot. Of course crap like 2223 or other hands containing 3 of a kind or so are folds even from the button.

I play more like the 60% style, which could be too tight overall, but I try to adapt it against different opponents - for example if I notice villain being tight OOP, I start to open 90%+ from the button etc.

Still raising EVERY button is not a good strategy, you might find it profitable in micro-stakes, but every thinking opponent that is not playing scared money will start to exploit your strategy. You are correct in the fact that most HU PLO players nowadays play too nitty post-flop and they are pretty easy to get ahead against in non-showdown pots.

It's actually kinda hard to talk about HU strategies without context - like the villain's style, history against etc. One can only give guidelines like raise most of your buttons or winning VPIP is between XX-XX etc. At least this is my opinion.

But overall you can talk a ton about HU strategies, when you know the context. Like one good example is this hand, which I played against a competent (=pro) IRL friend of mine a month ago (we played each other just because of the developement point of view at lower stakes than usual).

He told me what he had there in the hand and we talked about the hand like 30 minutes and if each other plays are good or not, each street decisions, hand put in vacuum and in bigger picture, from theoretical point of view and mathematical point of view - basically inside out. We disagreed at some things but anyway, the fact that it brought 30 min discussion between the players in question pretty much tells something how complex HU can be and how much there is to talk about when the whole context is known for all the persons discussing. Otherwise one can only give pretty much general opinions only.

Tsagalaga BTW said he's on a small break from poker stuff completely, but will drop some comments to this thread too when he comes back in a ~week.

**HollowPoint** · 11-11-2008 10:21

I can´t argue on the quality of the articles, good articles are very rare. The thing that bugs me most about the strategy/hand history articles is, that they rarely if ever stop to think about what the villain thinks the hero has. IMO this is a huge mistake, one should always be aware of how consealed or exposed ones hand is. There are a lot of situlations where your cards might as well be turned over.

I like the old selfdefence rule, don´t be where the opponent expects you to be, thoug it´s often a bit difficult to apply.

For poker strategy discussion, I myself find it easyer to talk about general strategy opposed to certain hands that actually took place, expecially for HU poker. This is because there is often so much affecting the hand, that is extermely difficult to explain to others who haven´t seen the past hands.

It also seems very difficult for a player with a totally different style to understand how the villain might be in a different mental state after playing agains another style opponent. For example, a nitty passive player will likely never engounter opponents in same mental state as somekind of ultra-aggressive in your face type, and he might not understand the flow of the game that affects the hand in question.

Hands discussed in vacuum I´ve found very usefull, they can be perfect examples of certain strategic lines or situlations, and how they affect.

Your answer raised a lot of questions, like the exploiting the frequent SB raising. I compensate such a play by 3betting, not to exploid it so much, but to make it unprofitable for the raiser. Also a call and c/r flop has proven a good tactic agains some players who cbet a lot. The downside to this is that increases variance a lot. What kind of general tools do You use against an opponent who raises 90% from SB?

Also affecting the way SB should be played is obviously the way BB is played. I´m not a big fan of calling, as You might quessed, but then again I play Holdem. So do You call a raise from BB, and if so, with what kind of hands? Playing OOP, there is likely to be a plan how the hand is played forehand, so would these be like rundown hands looking for a possible c/r on flop or big cards trying to get TPTK and lead etc?

One of the advantages I´ve found in raising every SB is, that it narrowes the villains hand range, and if he won´t 3bet, my hand is totally random. This makes it very difficult to play BB by just calling, and then again 3bet narrowes his hand range even more, witch is not a nice thing OOP. This is offcourse heavily depending on the stack sizes, and me playing the sit´n´gos, the effective stacks are shallow, so I don´t have experience on playing HU with 200BB stacks.

So how do You adapt on different effective stacks, obviously there is much more play on turn and river with bigger stacks, and starting hands can be more creative, but how does it affect the pot manipulation preflop?

Uh, seems I´m asking a lot of questions, I hope You won´t send me a bill from coaching...

**Winnergambling** · 04-12-2008 18:50

For the first part of your text I agree. I personally for example don't see much point of posting HU hands to the forums for strategy discussion since they are so read dependant. Of course against known opponents they are OK, but this applies to high-stakes pretty much only.