Poker Strategies

If you are playing Texas Holdem and you see pocket aces in your hand, you might feel inclined to do a little leap inside your head. The same thing tends to happen to players who see pocket aces when playing Pot Limit Omaha Poker. But you should keep in mind that not all poker hands that have aces are strong. They are called “uncoordinated aces” or “naked aces”.

Many players know that the best starting hand in this variation of poker is A-A-K-K double suited. This is considered a monster hand in Pot Limit Omaha Poker and pre-flop this hand will always be ahead. Other powerful hands are those that have aces in them and a couple of coordinated cards.

But when the aces are not coordinated or suited, it can get a little tricky as Poker players will usually assume that it is a strong hand also. They sometimes start playing it as they would a Holdem poker game, treating any starting hand with two aces like the nuts. The problem here is that aces that do not have any backup will force you to rely only on the aces to win your hand. Either that or you need to be extremely lucky.

Let’s look at this situation. Player X is an aggressive player type who raised from the middle position in an Omaha Poker game. The player on the button reraised the pot. The LAG player then reraised all-in and was called. He showed A-A-4-9 off suit and the opponent had a holding of Qh-Jd-10h-9s. In this case, the aces only have a 58% chance of winning. It is too close a poker game. The flop falls 8s-10c-2d, which suddenly brings the aces down and leaves them the underdog. The player with the wrap now had a 57% chance of winning and actually hit his straight. The aces were busted.

While the situation above required the wrap to hit the hand, it also demonstrates that a player needs to backup his aces. Any random hand with two aces may be a favorite pre-flop but it needs to hit in order to stay ahead in the game. Majority of the time uncoordinated aces will not hit the flop.

How you should play uncoordinated aces depends on a couple of factors. You should consider what your position is at the table, what type of players your opponents are, what the limits are, and how much you have in your stack. This is the type of hand that you may even want to consider doing a limp-reraise with just to see if you get lucky on the flop. Limping with aces seems to be a pretty bad thing to do but you should keep in mind that this is an Omaha Poker Games hence it is a drawing game. If you pick up a draw on the flop, you will actually be ahead against other players who have uncoordinated aces. If you are playing on the button against only limpers and you know that a raise will eliminate some of them out, you may consider putting in a raise. Just remember that if you do not hit the flop, you should tread lightly or you might just end up giving your chips all away.

During a certain game at the World Series of Poker,  David “DevilFish” Ulliott had flopped a set of kings holding Ks-Kh-7c-2s.  The flop fell Kd-Jc-5d.  His opponent, Markus Golser, had a holding of Ad-Qd-10c-4s.  He had both a nut flush draw and a nut straight with 17 outs to hit his hand (Jd would give Ulliott a full house and this had to be subtracted from the equation).  At this point, Golser was around 70% to make his poker hand but Ulliott was behind.

Omaha Poker is a game of big cards and big draws. The game between Ulliot and Golser was a very good example of how a big draw can actually be better than a made hand.  Golser caught a 9 on the fourth street and had a hand that had multiple straight and flush draws. In the end, he was able to knock out a player when his draw got there.

A wrap is a poker hand that has at least 3 coordinated cards that can help make a straight.  An example of this is A-Q-10-4.  Hands such as J-10-9-8 are also very powerful hands because these can make any potential winning hand from a nine high straight to broadway.  Hands that are also suited and coordinated will be even more valuable.

Players who have a big wrap like A-Q-J-10 or J-10-9-8 will usually raise pre-flop. This is not a really bad play, actually. If the board flops low or paired then you will have some kind of a straight draw with many flops. There is also a very good chance for flopping high pairs and even sets when the board comes paired. You get additional outs when you catch a flush draw if your wrap is suited.

When doing flop a solid draw, many Poker players get a bit confused as to how they should play a wrap. Some recommend pushing draws like what Golser did. This play is solid because a lot of times you will have a lot of outs to hit your draw. Just be careful pushing if you only have a gutshot draw because then you will only have four outs and you want at least an open-ended straight draw with at least 8 outs. If you have a straight and flush draws, you will usually have 18 outs. You can feel confident about your Poker Games now as the odds are in your favor for hitting your hand.

Be a little more careful if you’re pushing a wrap on the turn. Here, your odds will be reduced by half due to the fact that only a single card can come and you might not hit your hand. Thus, at this point, it becomes more important to look at your pot odds, which you can compute for using the 4-2 method. If you have 18 outs, then the possibility that you will make your hand is 36%. In most cases, the odds will be for you to make a draw. But if the odds look a bit bleak, then you might want to consider just folding your hand.