OMAHA

I like Reading Ben Grundy's blog and his high stakes Omaha action. I started playing this game a lot in the spring and I made the mistake of playing HI-LO right off the bat thinking that I'd do better with a pot splitting game. What I didn't realize is that Hi-Lo takes a lot more skill because the real money comes from scooping the whole thing and the losses come from having two decent enough hands to get scooped. Regular Omaha just means you peddle the nuts, get your money in and hope the chasers fail.

Since the switch to HI, I’ve been winning consistently on the $25 buy-in tables. The weakness in my game is not knowing the exact odds and having to use intuition a little too often.

Today I held (8 c 9c Th Ah)

The Flop {Ts 8h Ac}

I bet the pot with all three pair and got 1 caller.

The Turn was {Kh}

I bet $3 and my opponent went all in. It cost me $9 more for a $25 pot.

I had 3 pair and the nut flush draw. I figured he must have the straight, but I had a lot of outs. How many? Not as many as I thought. I ran it through the Odds calculator later.

Putting him on a straight, he was a 62.5% to 35.5% favorite I was to learn later. A bad call on my part.

But if that Ts was a Tc I would have been a favorite by 57.5% to 42.5% just because I had an extra flush draw.

It's these little things that I can only learn by playing and investigating later. As long as I can keep ahead of the rake this education is doing me good. The little winning streak I'm on will certainly help when I make these lousy calls in the future.