Tip #1: Pot Limit Omaha Starting Hands – Part 1

One of the biggest issues that new poker players have when learning how to play is being selective in their starting hands. This results in seeing a flop and immediately folding or connecting with the flop with a mediocre hand and paying too much to be second best.

This issue is only amplified in Omaha simply because all players are dealt 4 cards to start with. Then players start coming up with hands they could hit if only the flop were to go their way. So as you can imagine, Omaha has plenty of starting hand pit falls that new players tend to fall in.

What we have done over the next two pages is come up with a do and don’t guide for choosing starting hands in pot limit Omaha. These tips should help all players avoid tricky situations on the flop and later streets that cost most new players money.

Omaha Starting Hands – Part 1

4 of a Kind and 4 Flush Cards

One of the most common mistakes players make when choosing a starting hand is choose hands that leave them with little to no outs. For example, starting with a hand such as Ah-Ad-As-Ac would be a terrible hand because the best hand you can hope for here is a pair, two pair or a full house.

While a full house is not a bad hand, it sure is not as likely to happen. The problem with a pair or two pair is the fact that they hardly ever hold up in a showdown. This is combined with the fact that the fear of someone else having a better hand will hinder you from getting any value from your pair or two pair as well.

Similar to having 4 of a kind for starting cards is having 4 cards of the same suit. The problem with this is that you can only use 2 of your 4 starting cards so you are already short two flush cards as outs.

As a rule of thumb, you only need two of each card. Meaning, only 1 pair or two cards of one suit. That way you can make more hand combinations out of your starting cards.

On the next part we will look at starting cards that players should play and other hands that they should play cautiously if at all.