Fixed buy-ins as the safe route to learning Omaha poker...
PLEASURES OF FOUR PLAY Yesterday, I wrote about Omaha as a way of getting a little more action if you were spending more time mucking your cards in Texas Hold’em than betting on them. In a brief follow up, it’s worth noting that the safest way to really learn Omaha and the intricacies of its four-hole-card-kick-off is to try a fixed buy-in tournament. The key is to swiftly adjust your valuation of the hands you might commonly expect to receive in Hold’em. Premium and rare cards in Hold’em translate to just “good hands” and more likely “out there” hands in Omaha. In fixed buy-ins you’ll be up against, in the main, very good players you can learn from and your downside cash risk is very small. It’s a great way to get a real action education without expensive tuition fees. Four play without a happy ending is just pain without gain.
DRAWN TO DRAWING? There’s a type of player these days who is more than sixty per cent gambler. These are the guys and girls you’ll find betting on drawing to a big hand. This is a risky play. You’re really saying I’m literally playing for the “luck-of-the-draw”. A typical “draw demon” will be a player who will pursue Ace-three same-suited through the flop and beyond with the aggressive conviction that the flush, straight or even the running flush is there to be drawn out. If you like your life in the fast lane, all well and good, but make sure you are playing at a cash level that isn’t going to give you mood swings, a divorce or start you “chasing results” because you “need a win”. A good “draw demon” is well aware of his or her own condition and will usually be playing one level down from their normal comfort zone. In this manner the swings between winning and losing don’t effect your ability to bet with power when you know you’re onto a winning hand. There’s nothing worse than having lost several games with risky draws only to find you don’t have the financial ammo to pile in and capitalise when you’re chosen strategy is about to come home big time. Remember. Play BELOW your comfort zone with cash in hand when you decide to dice with Lady Luck or just when you think she’s puckering her lips she’ll bite you.
DEMON DRAWING I experimented with the “demon drawing” mind-set a couple of nights ago in a few very low limit games and it’s uncanny how many big hands you can actually draw in a two hour session. The question hovering in my mind all the time was, “Am I pulling this off because the money is so low it hardly seems to matter?” It’s a bit like practising a tightrope walk when you’re only six inches above the ground with a view to going high-wire eventually without a net. You can’t really be sure you’re as good as you think you are.
