As a part time professional poker player my history is very similar to a lot of the fellow early 30-somethings I meet in this industry that play either part time or full time for their income. We all started out playing Stud before the Hold’em boom, and then migrated over to No Limit Hold’em as soon as the Moneymaker Effect took over the entire United States at large. We all jumped on Party Poker or PokerStars and decided to grind out (of all things) low stakes Sit & Gos. From there almost universally all of us moved to cash game poker where we’ve all carved out a nice bit of coin grinding out a modest win-rate at the low and medium stakes. All of us remember the days when we all had great win-rates at cash games or amazing ROI numbers for Sit & Gos when the UIGEA was not in effect and the global economy hadn’t done its best impersonation of the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl (that’d be a nosedive). In effect, the No Limit Hold’em games are frankly a lot harder than they used to be and good players just have less of an edge than ever.
Now that everyone from top professionals like Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi to the lowliest of goons on internet forums all say the same thing about online No Limit Hold’em, what’s a good player supposed to do to really carve out a great win-rate?Many simply opt for grinding it out, playing hundreds of thousands of hands at a near break-even point and simply live off their rakeback or VIP program. That lowly existence certainly isn’t for those of us who have a competitive edge and aim to get better and actually profit when we put in a session. Is there a game out there with a big edge beyond the micro-stakes?
Players might want to look for the answer into the popular off-shoot of Hold’em: Omaha. As Sammy Farha says, if No Limit Texas Hold’em is the Cadillac of poker, then Omaha is the Porsche. The question that a lot of poker players ask themselves is whether they’re able to handle such a fast and sexy vehicle. The game is a lot more complex than Hold’em, as well as introducing the Hi/Lo variant of the game where there are split pots. But is Omaha really going to boom because of an edge for good players? For the answer I asked some mid-stakes players on various sites.
“I don’t think that PLO Hi/Lo will attract many players in the near future because split pots just seem to keep the fish away,” commented “alavet” a low-stakes Russian player on PokerStars. “I believe the number of players for PLO Hi will definitely expand hopefully another 50% in the next year. Hold’em games are getting too nitty and boring, especially for the higher limits.”
What about the edge for micro-stakes beginners playing Pot Limit Omaha Hi for the first time? Mid-stakes player “stacks_for_sale” gives some interesting insight, “Should NLHE lose its popularity, PLO for sure will be the next wave of poker as a lot of good NLHE players will (and in fact have been) making the transition to PLO. PLO is already big in Europe, and will definitely come before PLO/8 because it is simpler to play. That is to say, because it is played ‘high only’ there are less rules, math, and strategy associated with it than the high-low variant. In addition, Omaha games in general are action games meaning people are playing a wide range of starting hands and hand values change wildly with board texture.”
With the major poker room sites offering plenty of Omaha action for Hi, Hi/Lo, or even Limit, the availability of games for players to jump into is wide. PokerStars regularly runs guaranteed Omaha tournaments every day, and both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have regularly populated cash games and Sit & Gos. There is even an Omaha hand tracking utility, although slightly outdated, in PokerTracker Omaha Edition which can be coupled with PokerEV to do all the things any other hand analyzing program can do.
Now that the entire Omaha possibility has intrigued you, where do you go for some good solid Omaha experience and knowledge to give you a leg up on the competition? In the world of published books the most famous book is Sammy Farha’s “Farha on Omaha” which has received poor reviews in Amazon’s book store. The highest rated book in the store is Jeff Hwang’s “Pot-Limit Omaha Poker” which sells for a ridiculously low $10.17 for a new paperback edition of the book. On top of that, the popular online poker training school DeucesCracked.com offers some of the best Omaha online training around.
So is Omaha the new sexy girl at the bar that everyone is trying to hit on? For now Omaha just might be that girl a lot of us are getting the courage to finally get up and ask out on a date to see if she’s our type, hoping she won’t dump us right away. Whether it’s the next boom in poker remains to be seen but in the meantime I’ll keep enjoying my 10BB/100 win rate at the microstakes.