As in Hold'em, if you only raise the very best hands your play will become predictable. Mixing it up in Omaha is just as crucial.

For beginners a good pre-flop raising strategy is to raise only with any of the top 30 PLO starting hands -- all of which have at least two to a suit.

Once you want to start opening up your game a bit you can mix in any four cards in a row that are double-suited with cards, six or higher, and all single- and double-suited A-K-x-x with at least one x-card, ten or higher.

Hands like Q-J or J-T double-suited are also good to raise with. This is similar to raising suited connectors or medium pocket pairs in Hold'em.

You're doing so to mix it up more so than for value. As with any poker advice, these are just guidelines to give you a place to start.

The hands you raise and limp with will change depending on your table, your image, your skill and the skill of your opponents. Whether or not you were the pre-flop raiser makes a big difference in the way you play your hand.

If you're the raiser and you miss the flop, should you bet out referred to as a continuation bet or c-bet? Being the pre-flop raiser allows your opponents to give you respect for having a strong hand.

If they don't hit the flop it will make it hard for them to call any bet you put out on the flop. In Hold'em , this happens much more often than it will in Omaha.

Because your opponents have the potential to hold two different flush possibilities, along with a wrap straight draw, it's much more likely that they will have hit enough of a hand on the flop to be willing to call you down.

This doesn't render c-betting obsolete; it just forces you to be more selective and diligent. You raised a pair of naked aces.

Having a pair of aces here in Hold'em isn't the nuts but it's not an altogether weak holding either. In Omaha, though, you have to be very afraid of your hand.

This is a good time to check the flop and let the other two players fight for it. This is not a hand to get invested in.

But if the flop falls differently:. This flop isn't the best for your hand but at the same time it's not altogether bad.

This is a flop worth betting at. While you don't have the nuts you do have a strong enough hand not to have to sign off just yet.

Just don't get too married to the hand; there's no shame in laying down after you raise. Flopping two pair is a situation that gives many players a difficult time.

Two pair in Hold'em is a very strong holding while in Omaha it is very vulnerable. Again, pots in Omaha are most commonly won by straights and flushes, unlike in Hold'em where they're more often taken down by pairs and two pairs.

The potential to have upward of 20 outs in Omaha allows for drawing hands to be statistically ahead of made hands.

If anyone is willing to call you after betting out with two pair they either have you beat or have a strong draw to end up ahead.

In a nut game you have to be willing to ditch the marginal holdings, no matter how good they look on the flop.

One of the worst scenarios is playing bottom two pair. With sets being far more common in Omaha, turning a full house with bottom two is guaranteed to cost you your stack up against a flopped middle or top set.

Omaha is played with four hole cards and five community cards. These two poker variants are played very differently even though the only major difference between them is that you have four hole cards in Omaha instead of two in Hold'em.

This makes Omaha a game of the nuts as, very often, you'll need to make not just a full house but a good or best full house in order to win the pot.

Because of those extra two cards, Omaha has 16, starting hand combinations, compared to in Hold'em. That's a ten-fold increase.

Read more in our Omaha vs Hold'em article especially if you're transitioning from Texas Hold'em into Omaha. In Omaha, the best combination of suits for your four hole cards is to have two cards that belong to one suit and two cards that belong to another suit.

Having a double-suited hand is the best possible scenario since you have two sets of cards that can potentially make a flush. Any combination of cards is always better if they're double-suited, and any combination is worse than you think if it's not double-suited.

Having a third card of the same suit isn't an improvement as you can only use two cards out of four, and that extra card is actually one less out for your flush.

Read more about this in our Omaha starting hands guide and in Part II of our eight-part series. Omaha is meant to be played tight and in position.

Bluffs are less common in Omaha than in Texas Hold'em, so it's vital to play in position to gain as much information as possible on your opponents' hands.

This is, of course, just a general rule of thumb and you'll need a more refined skill set to actually make things go your way. And does this beat someone who has a pair in their hand?

Re: Above, Hand 2: A 2 instead of a K would not give a straight. Many a time i have fallen for reading 4 cards from the board. Thanks for pointing out some possible mistakes i could make becasue i will be playing a Omaha tourney tonight.

Can a person win with trips playing Obama? Who wins this type of hand? Split pot, both players have as their best 5 card hand but player one plays his 67 and player 2 could play his 45 or 87 would make the same hand either way.

There we explain how to open and defend, how position influences your decisions, how to evaluate starting hands, and how to defend from the big blind.

Omaha has 16, starting hand combinations if we ignore the suits. If we'd include the suits, there would be , possible combinations for your four hole cards in Omaha poker.

This is compared to only starting hands in Texas Hold'em, or 2, if we include the suits. Omaha has x more starting hand combinations than Texas Hold'em, and, therefore, starting hand charts like the top 30 below can't be used as a strict guide.

It is here merely to illustrate the principles of good hand selection in Omaha. All hands in the above top 30 list must be double-suited, which means that two cards must belong to one suit and the other two cards to another suit.

Double-suited hands are always the best. If you're coming from a Texas Hold'em background where pocket Aces rule supreme, at first glance, Omaha doesn't seem to be very different looking at the chart above, but it is.

We have two more cards, and your edge is always smaller in Omaha than it is in Texas Hold'em. That being said, pocket Aces still represent the entire first tier of starting Omaha hands, as there are six really good ones plus the entire A A x x range.

The big blind player wins the hand with the flush, and collects the pot. The blinds and button all shift one player to the left, and the next hand begins.

The player on the left loses with a pair of aces with a king kicker A-A-K The player on the right wins with three-of-a-kind A-A-A Note that the player on the left does not have a flush because Omaha rules dictate that you must use exactly two cards from your hand and three from the board.

If he has two spades in his hand, he would have a flush. Learn about Pot Limit Omaha strategy here. Note: Want to upgrade your poker skills? Get our free preflop charts and start playing like a pro before the flop.

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