What is the optimum strategy regarding what you should have to call with before the flop in four-card Omaha? The best answer is “it all depends”. It really does not depend on the best theoretical answer to this question, ie. whatever your favorite Omaha authority recommends. “Book advice”, which may well be quite correct for general situations, is not always optimal for specific situations. Where you draw the line should depend much more on “relativity”, that is, relative to what the rest of the players at your table are calling with. Assuming that your playing skills are adequate, you should achieve optimum results by simply playing the flop a notch tighter than most of the other players in your game. Note that this principle even applies in wild games where the betting is frequently “capped” before the flop, and then played “no foldem” style (assuming adequate bankroll and time).

I have received several inquiries as to why my point count system recommends seeing the flop with hands of eleven or more points. Hands with eleven or more points occur around forty percent of the time. If you are in a game where less than forty percent of the players are seeing the flop (including blinds), you should probably look for another game. My eleven point general recommendation is based upon the apparent fact that most average to bad Omaha players have some religious conviction about seeing the flop, and hence it is very rare to find an Omaha game with less than half the players usually seeing the flop. There is a common misconception (even among some good players) that the best way to profit from this is to play only rock solid hands. It is true that by playing squeaky tight you should do well on the hands that you do play (although you will not get as much action as a looser player would with the same hands), but you are clearly passing up some lesser, but basically profitable, situations.

It is fairly easy to demonstrate that it is not optimum to play very tight. To do this I will use some holdem analogies since most readers are more familiar with the top holdem hand groupings. Suppose you are playing in a ten handed “one-two” unit holdem game (for example a five-ten or ten-twenty game), with two one unit blinds per round. Let us assume that your expected value (ie. average win-loss) on each of the two hands when you are forced to put up the one unit blind is minus one half, so that over the long haul you tend to lose around one unit per round in blinds (you occasionally win a hand on your blind). This may be a bit generous, since, if you are playing in a game with frequent before the flop raising (such that you have to fold most of your blinds), your blind loss gets closer to the “non donato” limit of two units per round. If you average loosing more than two units per round on your blind hands (many people do), you are obviously doing something wrong.

As a starting point, let us consider the ultimate tight strategy of playing only the two best two-card hands, paired aces or kings. That is, we fold all non-blind hands that are not a pair of aces or kings. Since we rate to hold aces or kings only one out of 110 hands, on those occasions we would have to win an average of 11 units to offset the minus one unit of blind loss for eleven rounds (ten handed). These hands are good but they are not that good! So this would be a loosing strategy.

So if we modify our strategy to voluntarily play only the top five holdem hands (ie. aces, kings, queens, and ace-king suited and unsuited), one of which is held about one in 39 hands or about once every four rounds, then we would merely have to have an average win of about four units every time we played one of those hands to offset the one unit per round blind loss. The average win of those hands is quite dependent on your betting style and the calling propensities of your opponents (partly influenced by their image of you). Once you are perceived to be playing very tight, you would probably only show a small profit with this tight flop-seeing strategy.

If we further modify our strategy to include jacks, tens, ace-queens, and suited ace-jacks and king-queens, we will now be playing (and probably raising) more than once every two rounds (more than double the previous strategy, now over five percent of our starting hands). Although your chances of winning any given hand that you choose to play have gone down a bit, you will certainly show an overall profit and win hence win additional dollars by playing these additional hands. By extending this logic it is clear that playing any class of hand that is good enough to average a plus in the long run, will, by definition, add to your winnings.

Thus, if you only play hands that are five percent likely to occur (that is you only play a hand around once every two rounds), whether at holdem or Omaha, your expected blind losses will be too large a percent of your expected wins. If a given hand rates to be a long run percentage winner in your particular game, you are actually losing money by folding it. If we knew exactly where to draw the line, we could maximize our expected win. The main variables which determine just which marginal hands are profitable in the long run are the relative tightness/looseness of the opponents, your position, and your playing skills.

Otherwise put, there is a relationship between starting hand quality and your expected money result. If your hands usually are several points better than most of your opponents, then in the long run, you rate to collect that difference from those opponents (but you rate to lose a few dollars to the few opponents who consistently play better hands than yours). Thus the “relativity principle” says that where you draw the line should depend on how many of your opponents tend to put money into the pot with lesser hands versus how many tight players rate to call on any given hand.

Accordingly, as long as the quality of your starting hands in Omaha averages a point or two better than most of your opponents’ starting hands, you should show a profit playing these hands in the long run. With regard to evaluating what kind of hands your opponents play, the easy way is to note how many stay in to see the flop each hand. If well over half of your opponents are seeing the flop most of the hands, then you know you have found a home.