Omaha Eight-Or-Better: Developing Detailed Starting Standards

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Starting hand selection is incredibly important in any form of Omaha. When holding four cards instead of two, the frequency that you will connect with the board in some manner is far higher than it is in hold’em. Of course, that is also true for your opponent, and since there is no place ticket to cash in poker, nothing is more costly than consistently showing down the second-best hand.

Many resources are available both online and in print on what constitutes a playable Omaha Eight-or-Better (O8) holding. However, most of them just scratch the surface and give the usual basic generic advice such as… don’t leave home without an ace, middling cards are bad, and you want to play hands that can scoop.

In our past installments on O8, an attempt was made to dig a little deeper and into more detail on the features of a holding that would either increase its value or possibly render it unplayable, but it didn’t fully address many of the specific situations and questions that will be faced in practice.

For example, is A 3 6 9 playable from UTG (lojack) in an online six-handed game? It has the second-best low draw (A-3), a suit to the six, but also a dangling nine which is the worst card in the game. What about A 4 6 10 from the hijack? Do we open A 5 7 9 from the cutoff? Over the next several issues, we will attempt to address detailed questions such as these.

Compiling a detailed starting hand chart for O8 is an impossible task as there are 16,432 distinct hands to consider, but we can try to slot hands into a few different categories and offer guidance on the minimum requirements that a hand generally requires in order to be playable from a certain position.

For example, suppose we are considering what A-3 holdings are playable from UTG in a six-handed game. Examples of proposed minimum requirements could be summarized as the following:

Has a suited ace (A 3 6 9)
Accompanied by two broad-way cards (A 3 10 Q)
Alongside a big pair, tens or better (A 3 10 10)
A-3-4 or A-3-5 combination with a big card (A 3 4 J or A 3 5 Q)

The hands above are right on the border of what generally constitutes a top 15% hand and are some examples of hands that probably make the cut for an early position open from either the lojack or hijack.

A few examples of A-3 hands that look decent but might not be quite good enough include:

Lacks a suited ace and has two cards in the middling six through nine zone (A 3 6 9)
Small pairs are a handicap (A 3 3 10 and A 3 6 6)

These holdings are probably among the best hands you would fold from the first two positions but can be opens from the cutoff and later. By no means is this an exact science, however, a line must be drawn somewhere.

So how do we rank hands and what percentage of hands should we play from each position? To answer the second question first, opening frequencies of successful online players typically fall within the following ranges:

Opening Frequencies
Lojack 15-20%
Hijack 20-25%
Cutoff 30%
Button 40-50% or more

We can play a fair amount of hands from early position in O8 because the equities run somewhat close and the cost of running into a better holding is not extraordinarily high. However, it is a split-pot game and there is still a price to pay for playing too loose from up front. And just as in any poker variant, more hands are playable from the later positions.

Now all we have to do is figure out what hands we should play from each position in order to roughly hit at the frequencies above. Most published or online hand rankings are simply based on “hot/cold” equities against either one random hand or a table full of players assuming everyone goes to showdown.

For example, the popular Hutchinson point system for starting hands is based upon a full ring game where all nine players all go to showdown. That is not particularly useful for tight aggressive, six-handed games and Hutchinson even states that his guidance is mostly geared for a beginner playing low-limit full ring games where multi-way pots are the norm and many people chase to the end.

While solvers that can help guide preflop decisions for hold’em and pot-limit Omaha are readily available, I’m not sure anything particularly helpful exists (at least publicly) for O8. There is one software package available that claims to have solved preflop decisions in four handed O8, however, reading through the details it didn’t seem that promising and results are only as good as the artificial intelligence within the model.

Perhaps it’s due to my actuarial and auditing background, but I’ve never been fond of blindly accepting conclusions coming out of a “black box.” Unless a model can be audited or otherwise verified, it seems preferable to start with something more basic, but completely understandable, and then let poker fundamentals take us the rest of the way.

ProPokerTools (PPT) is a great online resource for equity simulations and also has a feature that that ranks starting hands for full ring, six-max, and three-handed games. PPT doesn’t create these rankings by simply racing all of the possible holdings against a full table of random hands. Instead, they go through a series of iterations to create a list of “good hands” and the rankings are then ultimately developed assuming that only these “good hands” will contest the pots.

While PPT still does have the limitation in that it assumes all “good hands” are going to showdown, it is still superior to any hand rankings that are only based upon performance against random hands. Therefore, it’s a good starting point and we can adjust the value of hands up or down based to reflect important considerations such as the ability of a particular holding to realize its equity and reverse/implied odds.

Now let’s circle back to those A-3 holdings that we considered to be borderline playable from UTG in a six-handed game; the six-handed PPT ratings (on a 1-100 scale) are as follows:

A 3 6 9 [r 16]
A 3 10 Q [r 15]
A 3 10 10 [r 14]
A 3 4 J [r 13]
A 3 5 Q [r 13]

All of these holdings are within or below the 15-20% target frequencies, while the A-3 that were considered to be among the best hands that we would fold fall outside of that range:

A 3 6 9 [r 21]
A 3 3 10 [r 21]
A 3 6 6 [r 29]

At this point it’s worth mentioning that we should not set our opening standards simply by inputting hands into PPT and playing any holding that fits within the target range. PPT assumes that all hands go to showdown, and as previously mentioned we must also take into account a hand’s ability to realize its equity and potential reverse/implied odds.

A-3 holdings are probably relatively neutral in terms of equity realization and other factors, but that is not the case with other hands. For example, A 2 4 6 [r 21] is not in the top 20% but would be a clear play from any position due to the playability advantages of A-2 and other good low cards. A K Q 10 [r 21] is another solid one-way hand; we will either smash a flop and often have second best hands payoff, or completely miss and make an early exit.

In contrast 4 5 Q J [r 21] has the same PPT ranking as A 2 4 6 and A K Q 10 but may only be playable from either the cutoff or button. With 4 5 Q J we aren’t going to fully realize the equity associated with the 4-5 low and we can easily have our flushes and high cards dominated.

PPT is a very useful tool in helping determine the value of various holdings and aid in the decision process regarding what types of hands are profitable from each position. However, we also need to consider playability and table conditions. In the next issue, we will examine in more detail the low oriented hands that are playable from early position. ♠

Kevin Haney is a former actuary of MetLife but left the corporate job to focus on his passions for poker and fitness. He is co-owner of Elite Fitness Club in Oceanport, NJ and is a certified personal trainer. With regards to poker he got his start way back in 2003 and particularly enjoys taking new players interested in mixed games under his wing and quickly making them proficient in all variants. If interested in learning more, playing mixed games online, or just saying hello he can be reached at [email protected].