An Interesting Hand

Recently, an interesting hand came up in our regular pot-limit Omaha game in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The game was good and the action was fast and furious, but I hadn't been able to win any pots and was stuck about $1,500. Although I usually advocate having more chips on the table than any other player (or at least the ones you figure to make money from), on this particular night I was the shortest stack at the table with about $340. Because there were lots of preflop raises in this game, I thought it was best to keep a short stack and try to let some other player do the raising, get a few callers in the middle, and then come over the top with my premium (high cards/big pair) hands. By doing this, I would try to win a big pot with relatively little risk.

The game: Pot-limit Omaha, $400 buy-in, two blinds ($8-$8), ninehanded.

The hand: It was up to me to post the first (big) $8 blind. Five people called the initial bet, then the button raised to $40. I looked down at my cards, and even though I had a very good Omaha hand (Q J 10 8), I decided to flat-call his raise rather than reraise. I didn't want the other players out: If the button held big cards, my hand was unlikely to be the favorite over his, and I needed a good flop no matter what. If I received some help from the board, I might very well make a lot of money, especially if lots of players were still in (that is, I had a good multiway hand).

All limpers called the raise, so we took the flop sevenhanded with a pot size of $280. The flop came 9 6 2. Even though I frequently bet into broken boards like this (it's quite likely the flop hasn't helped anyone, there aren't that many draws possible, and even if I get called, I might get lucky and still win), it wouldn't be wise now, considering the table composition. It was a loose and lively game, in which calling and raising were favored over folding. On top of that, there were two players in this hand who were rather new to the game and played accordingly. That is, they stayed until the river with rather weak draws and in general tended to overvalue their hands, like most hold'em players do who pick up the game of Omaha. I checked, the player on my left bet $200, and it was called in four (!) places when the action came back to me.

What's my best play here; should I call or not? You might say there is nothing to think about, that I have an easy fold here; after all, all I have is an inside-straight draw, right? (In fact, that was what my opponents said after I won the pot. I got criticized by at least two players for my arguably foolish play, one of them saying, "So, you paid $200 for a gutshot; bet you don't write about that in your articles.") What is worse, I might make my hand and still lose (if a full house or backdoor flush gets completed on the river), or I might make it and then have to split (after all, there were four callers against a rainbow flop; what other hands but straight draws can they hold?). But there were some other things to consider here. There was $1,280 in the pot already, so I got pretty good odds in trying to make my hand. What's more, I didn't have just the inside-straight draw. Lots of turn cards besides a 7 would improve my hand considerably. Any 8, 10, jack, queen, or king would give me a small wraparound-straight draw, and any heart would give me a backdoor-flush draw that might be good. Of course, if the board paired on the turn, I would save my last $100 if I thought somebody might already be full.

I called the $200 and made the nuts on the turn: the 7. I bet my last $100 and was called by all five remaining players, making the pot $2,080. The fact that no one raised me meant my hand was probably good right now. If anyone held the same hand as I did (the nuts), he certainly would have raised the entire pot, trying to get all the others out to play the hand heads up against me, the all-in player. In that case, I might have some redraws against him (any 8 or 10 for a bigger straight), but since nobody raised my bet, I would just have to hope for a blank on the river. I would rather not see an 8 or 10 come up (because I then might still have to split), any spade might give somebody a backdoor flush, and any pair would certainly give somebody a full house.

The river was the delightful A, and I won a $2,080 pot for my $340 – after the flop, $1,800 for my last $300 – for a net profit of $1,720 (rake of $20). When I opened my hand, the two players to my left said I had been extremely lucky to win the pot. They claimed that I had made a big mistake in calling the $200 when all I had was an inside-straight draw, and that if I kept playing like that, I would be standing on the rail soon.

The truth is, I had been very lucky. I had been lucky to make my straight on the turn, lucky to be the only one having the straight, and lucky to have my hand stand up against five opponents when at least 17 river cards might have crippled my straight. But I didn't have just the inside straight, as my opponents claimed. In Omaha, it's always important to look at the extra outs, at secondary draws that you might have besides the ones that are obvious. I have always claimed that in Omaha, you should stick to playing quality starting hands, because they might enable you to "get lucky" once in a while by making a hand you weren't initially drawing to. So, yes, I was lucky to win such a big pot for my mere $340 with just a gutshot – and then again, I wasn't.