In order to be a consistant winner at Omaha or any form of poker, probably the most important decision that you make is what game you choose to play in. This subject is discussed to some extent in my book. Here are some recent additional thoughts.

Since casino poker has an inherent hourly cost, you should seek out a game where you have some noticable advantage in addition to your great poker playing skills. For example, if you are playing poker in a casino where the house drags ninty dollars an hour from a ten player table, you should like to have some discernable advantage which rates to be worth at least some of that nine dollars an hour overhead. Most poker tables, at which you find yourself playing, can be catagorized using a few general words. The most lucrative poker situations usually have some obvious advantageous collective traits about the game itself. A winning professional, consciously or subconsciously, is aware of this and looks for this. Otherwise put, if all of your opponents played sound basic strategy, even if none were great players, it would be difficult to win consistently.

One frequent favorable situation you will find at high Omaha is at a table where two thirds or more of the players are seeing the flop routinely. Since only about half the players (counting blinds) SHOULD be playing most hands, you know right away that there are going to be extra dollars in many of the pots. Of course this only helps your cause if YOU are NOT one of the loose callers (using my point count system you get an eleven point hand or better some forty percent of the time). The extra money from one or two extra flop callers easily offsets the house cut, so you have found yourself a home.

Another big advantage, which frequently accompanies the above scenario (more flop callers present a bigger pot incentive), is where there are one or more players routinely chasing bad flops. Although more players do make these pots harder to win (you will back in less with two pair or trips), you are better rewarded when you do win. Note again that in these situations, quality starting hands give you more likelihood of a last-card “swoozle” (winning the pot with a two-card combination other than the two-card combination that you were originally betting with).

Every now and then you find yourself at a table where you are practically the only player raising before the flop. This of course is a tremendous edge. You get to play all your blinds and minimum calls without pressure and play all your good hands at twice the price. And since this normally occurs at a very tightish table, you can count on picking up a few steals also.

At the other extreme are those wild tables where the betting is always raised and frequently “capped” before the flop. These games, although dangerous if you are having an unlucky streak, offer good odds (ie. easily overcoming house rake) to both the players who patiently sit back and wait for great starting hands, and also to the players who (more frequently) play merely “good” starting hands and are willing to get in there and slug it out in the all-too-frequent “showdown situations”.

Last but not least comment about choosing a table is about the presence of known good players versus known bad players. Which of these two should influence your choice of table most? This is really no problem. Clearly, at all limit poker, the presence of one or two known “money source” players, ie. the kind that are likely to contribute extra dollars to many pots, have a much more positive influence on your income, than the negative impact of great players.

If you are choosing between two or more tables, you might try using some sort of “head count” device for comparison purposes. For each table, count one plus point for each player that you know is unlikely to bluff, one point for each known “rock” (player that usually only bets when he has the goods), one to three plus points for each known loose caller, and perhaps subtract one for each known good player. Certain “dangerous” players (not good but very aggressive) can seriously try your luck and may be counted minus, somewhat depending upon position (you prefer to have them to your right).

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