Online Omaha Sessions

I played a couple of interesting Omaha 1/2 sessions 6 handed over the weekend, on Friday night and Sunday morning, ending up $380 across the pair of 2 hour sittings. Some observations:

1. Friday night was nasty. Every time I had a set, my opponent would hit his draws. In one hand someone called my set repot with top pair no draws, and hit a runner runner flush for $250. When I had a big straight draw, or a made straight, my opponent would hit his house. Frustrating, although to be fair I did one outer someone hitting quad kings on a cold decked AK3 rainbow board against his set of Aces for $200.

2. Sunday morning seems to be a good time to play Omaha on Stars, because you play a lot of eastern time Americans who are tired/drunk.

3. A German player called a Canadian an “arschloch” in the chatbox, which tickled me. Mental note to incorporate this fine word into my online vocabulary.

4. I tried out a new button strategy in the second session. Generally people will only bet when they have it in PLO (or a very good draw). When on the button, I began potting it on the turn if it was checked round to me (after all players check on the flop), even when I had nothing. People rarely slowplay in Omaha, and if you pot the turn after all have checked, they rarely have the odds for any draw and will always pass top pair. If you get re-raised you can just pass, but due to the lack of action, the pot bets don’t cost you much. I estimate this strategy generated $150 profit over the session, taking down a succession of $12/$18 pots

5. Players from Buenos Aries are insane. One guy repotted me twice for his whole $90 stack, with 455A against my AAJT. He immediately reloaded, so it’s not as if he was having a last gamble of the evening.

6. I was less gung-ho with my flopped sets in the second session. Normally I repot aggressively, but I’m starting to think people will always call their big draws on the flop always. I experimented with slow-playing, and if the turn is a blank, going to war at that point because they have much poorer odds to call, and will likely pass. If the turn is a danger card, you can simply call to try and house up, depending on the action. I guess I give up a lot of all-in pots where they don’t hit doing this, but I also save all the ones I would lose as well. I’m undecided whether this is a +ev strategy yet.

I’m still a relative novice at PLO, but I definitely feel I’m improving quite quickly now. Omaha is by far my favourite cash game to play now, as you can be in a ton of pots pre-flop without it being -ev, on the six handed tables in any case. Deep stack tournaments take centre stage this week, with four tournaments on consecutive nights with starting stacks of 7k, 4k, 8k and 20k. Time to patiently pick spots I guess.