Traps - Texas, Omaha, and New England Style

I have a friend who used to tease one of his buddies over his loose style of play. We'll call one Ben and the other Jerry. An impatient type, Jerry liked to limp in preflop with weak hands regardless of position, and when sitting to Ben's immediate left, he would often jump the gun and splash the pot with a call as soon as he saw Ben reach for his chips. On the occasions when Ben intended to raise, he would always make Jerry withdraw his chips, knowing full well that having made up his mind to play, the additional bet wouldn't deter him in the least. Ben's raise completed, Jerry would invariably perform a three-part ritual consisting of a frown, a pause, and a cold call of the two bets, at which point Ben would flash his friend a sympathetic smile, and with genuine concern in his voice, quietly ask: "Couldn't adjust?"

The ability to switch gears during the course of play, and adapt to changing circumstances that alter the character of a hand or a game are essential parts of the winning player's tool kit, as is the ability to make appropriate adjustments between games – between hold'em and Omaha, for example, or stud and stud eight-or-better. Obvious as this may sound, many players who recognize the necessity of the first kind of adjustment minimize the importance of the latter, blithely sitting down in new games whose basics they've failed to investigate or reflect upon. This can be, in a word, expensive.

Nothing warms the cockles of an Omaha eight-or-better player's heart like the sight of a hold'em player, bored or running badly in his game of choice, sitting down to give the "four-card game" a try. While some such players have done preliminary homework, plenty of others are content to wing it, relying on general poker knowledge to navigate them through the uncharted waters of a foreign game until its nuances reveal themselves. Happily for the Omaholic, this can take a while.

Here are some of the most common traps the Texas player should look to avoid on his first forays to Nebraska:

The high pocket pairs so useful in hold'em are a thin reed to lean on in a typical Omaha eight-or-better game. Whereas hold'em isn't a "nuts" game, the typical Omaha game is. In the two-card game, the savvy player isn't deterred from extracting extra bets by the mere appearance of a scare card on the board, but in a crowded Omaha field, he'd better be ready to slam on the brakes, or those extra bets are destined for someone else's stack. In Omaha Nation, if you don't already hold the nuts, or close to it, you'd sure as heck better be drawing to it.

In a hold'em pot into which a large field has limped, the button might ratchet down his starting requirements significantly, playing hands with which he would never come in from up front. In the Omaha game, such positional loosening is advisable to a far smaller degree. This has less to do with the chances of catching a good flop with a bad hand (which, for the purpose of this discussion, we'll assume to be roughly equivalent in either game) than the chances of catching a costly second- or third-best hand from which it's difficult to get away, a scenario far more likely to occur in the split-pot game than in hold'em. A piece of Omaha cheese by any other name smells just as cheesy, button or no.

Beginning to detect a theme here? The truth is that many hold'em players tend at first to overestimate all sorts of hands, high and low, as well as the multiway holdings they've heard so much about. Let's say you've been seduced on the button in a crowded field with the 4 5 6 7, a tempting holding to the uninitiated – middle suited connectors offering straight, flush, and even wheel possibilities – and a classic trap hand. The flop comes K-K-5 with one spade and everyone checks. The turn brings the 3, at which point a bet is followed by a flurry of calls and raises. The Omaha neophyte may very well overvalue this draw, since he's now picked up a flush draw as well as a 6-high straight draw – and 6 high is a pretty good low, to boot, right? Unfortunately, with that much action in a crowded field, that 6-high straight is not likely to be good for either low or high, and as for the low flush draw with the pair on board, there are more than a dozen hands that beat it. Of course, you could always hit an ace for the third-nut low, but be careful what you wish for; when you get sandwiched on the river between a high hand and a better low, and spend the maximum chasing half of a pot that you could've gotten out of on the turn for the minimum, it may hit you that rather than getting your wish, your wish got you.

In hold'em, your decisions as to the fast or slow play of a hand are geared toward maximizing a one-winner pot. With a one-way nut hand in Omaha, you're not the only one driving the process. Both the position and tendencies of the other-direction winner have to be factored into the equation, for if the money is not ideally positioned between you and the other leader, your aggression may accomplish nothing more than to drive the money out.

This is something that stud players making the transition to stud eight-or-better have to adjust to, along with their hold'em counterparts jumping to Omaha. Here's a simple example: If you limp or are blinded into a pot that gets heads up right away and the board comes with a complete low, you've only got a high draw, and if your opponent bets, it matters not how spectacular that draw is – you're playing only to lose or get your own money back. That's a cruise on the SS Lousy Pot Odds. Pass.

And speaking of poor pot odds … imagine for a moment that you write for a magazine devoted to the world of poker, an arena that features no shortage of interesting folks. Imagine further that dealing with the lobbying efforts of some such colorful characters, eager to be mentioned in said magazine, is something that comes with the territory, and that requires a certain amount of tact and creativity. Finally, imagine that after week No. 4 of the NFL season, your beloved New England Patriots have just been bounced by the Redskins and have an injury list longer than the line at the DMV – all of which prompts you, in a moment of weakness, to tell a floorman named Richard Tilley: "Tell you what – if the Pats win the Super Bowl, I'll mention you in my column."

Don't get me wrong. Tilley's a fine and funny fellow – a man's man, a ladies' man, a man for the ages – and certainly worthy of mention. In fact, Tilley defines greatness, at least by some accounts, albeit all Tilley's. I, on the other hand, apparently define "not practicing what I preach" – for as bleak as the Pats chances appeared in September, the fact is that I ignored my own advice about pot odds by offering a proposition "bet" in which I stood to win … absolutely nothing.

That son of a gun Tilley – hoisted me with my own petard.