Creative Play in Omaha

There is still plenty of room for creative play in short handed Pot Limit Omaha Holdem poker and especially if you know your opponent to be somewhat tricky. It was folded around to me in the cut-off and I open raised with the As-9c-9d-7h. Both blinds called and we had a three way pot. The flop came 10s-9s-8h giving me an eight way straight draw and middle set.

The small blind led out with a pot sized bet and the big blind folded and I called. I felt that the small blind betting into two players like this indicated a made hand and this had to mean a straight. So a raise would not only fail to take the pot but I wasn’t even certain that I had the best set. I decided to wait until the turn to see what happened and the turn card brought the 2s making a flush possible.

The small blind bet out again and I re-raised the pot. The reason that I did this takes some explaining but it has to do with me representing the flush. My call on the flop could have been made with a wide range of holdings of which a flush draw was one of them. The lone ace of spades in my hand meant that I wasn’t in any danger of running into the nuts.

The only hand that I had to fear was top set as I had the nines and a player who had top set may not lay their hand down to this kind of pressure when in their own mind they had ten outs to improve. But a player who just had a straight and nothing more could easily believe in their own mind that they were in fact drawing dead when a flop caller suddenly comes out firing. I put my best confident face on while making the play and I could sense that my opponent was watching me.

It must have been no longer than about fifteen to twenty seconds but my opponent eventually folded their hand. But I have made this pressure play numerous times in various different guises. To be able to pull it off requires several things. Firstly you need to know what type of hand that your opponent could be holding. This can be far easier to do in Pot Limit Omaha poker than it can in a game like hold’em like in this situation for instance where a player bet into two opponents on a straightening board. This tends to represent a straight far more in PLO than it does in hold’em.

Then you need to know what type of player they are and if they are capable of laying down a hand. If they cannot do this or they are too weak to do this then you have no fold equity in the situation whatsoever and will end up having to make a hand too often. Before anyone asks, no I don’t always get these plays right but then again who does? Sometimes my decision making seems so bad that I sometimes despair that I can actually play the game but it all seems to come good in the end.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”