Omaha Players, Omaha Decisions, and Not Releasing Your Hand

I received an e-mail from a player a while ago in which he described a situation that took place during an Omaha eight-or-better tournament that he had played. He wanted my opinion on the ruling, because he wasn't quite sure that it was correct. This situation also was posted on one of the many poker forums.



His e-mail described the situation as follows:



I was playing in an Omaha eight-or-better tourney and lost the following hand, and the floorperson's ruling left me wondering if he handled it correctly.



I was in the big blind with the Q 8 4 3. Six players saw the flop, including me.



The flop was 4 3 3. The betting was capped four ways.



The turn was the 5. All players paid two bets.



The river was the 8. There was two more bets apiece.



One player showed A-2 for the nut low.



I tabled my hand. The dealer was looking at another player's hand and incorrectly called out, "Fives full of threes," and mucked my hand. I had threes full of eights. Before she could muck the other player's hand, I noticed that he had threes full of fives, and I pointed it out.



The dealer called the floorperson over and told him that she saw that I had threes full of fours but did not see my 8. The flooperson asked the table if anyone saw my 8, and nobody said they did. The floorperson ruled my hand dead and told me that he couldn't pull my cards out of the muck or call the camera on this ruling.


Many of the responses to this forum post were very critical of the dealer for not reading the hands correctly, including a poster who stated: "The dealer should be fired; she is worthless and can't read a hand correctly."


Omaha eight-or-better is a tough game to deal – not physically, but mentally. Omaha eight-or-better players are notoriously picky, mean, and demanding. They tend to try to run a game more than other players, they get short with dealers when the dealers attempt to do things they are supposed to do, and they expect dealers not to make mistakes when the players themselves are the ones who are causing them.



Here's an example: In a normal midlimit Omaha eight-or-better game, the final board reads A-4-3-6-7. The first player turns over his hand, 3-3-2-K, and says, "I got a one-card deuce and three threes." The next player turns over his hand, 8-7-2-9, and says, "I got a one-card deuce, also; give me a quarter." The last player turns over his hand, A-8-5-9, and says, "Give me the high half; I got the straight."



Most Omaha eight-or-better games are played out similarly to what I described. The players do not just turn their hands up and let the dealer read them; they most always will announce their hands. If in the above scenario a dealer looked at the hands and, thinking something might not be right, started to dissect what the hands really were, he would be scolded incessantly and told, "Chop the pot, dealer, we know what we are doing; quit touching the cards and being confused." A great dealer (who plays Omaha eight-or-better) would immediately announce that the second player does not have a one-card deuce, and of course would be yelled at until he could get enough words out to prove it to the table. A normal good dealer probably wouldn't see it immediately. This is the reason that most dealers (good, great, and bad) simply do what the players tell them to do. As an avid Omaha eight-or-better player, I don't blame them one bit (after all, I announce my hands, but I have never been wrong).



In the situation described above, the dealer would have done a better job had she made sure that the best hand was getting the pot. Incorrectly reading a hand with a board of 4-3-3-5-8 is not a hard thing to do. The players do it all the time. So, in this case, the dealer read "fives full of threes." As a player, if I had threes full of eights in this situation and heard that I was beat, the first thing I would do is ask the dealer to show me fives full of threes. It is no different from hold'em, where a dealer might, while looking at a board of 10-10-9-8-7, see my opponent's hand of 9-8 and announce "full house." With a jack in my hand, I most certainly am not going to just wing my cards into the muck or let the dealer kill my hand. I am going to look at his hand, see the full house, and then allow my hand to be mucked.



In addition, if the dealer does not announce a hand, and I know I have the best hand, I am not going to release my cards until the pot has been pushed to me. This is something that I talk to players about all the time. It is so important that you hold on to your cards that I just can't comprehend why so many players don't do it. It's just crazy.

Michael O'Malley is the poker room manager for PartyPoker.com and can be reached at [email protected]. His website is updated regularly at http://www.rzitup.com/.