The transition from a game like Texas hold em to Omaha can be trickier than some players imagine. Strategies for hold em do not always transfer and you may need a new approach if you’re going to succeed at Omaha. A good grounding in basic Omaha strategy combined with improving your own poker skills should give you a good chance to come out ahead.

Basic Omaha Concept No. 1: Starting Hand Selection
As important as hand selection is in Texas hold em, it is exponentially more important in Omaha. In Omaha you are dealt four cards, meaning you can have six distinct two card hands. If you are playing nine opponents that means you are effectively up against 54 other hands. Try to think about how strong you would want your hold em hand to be if you were facing 54 opponents.

Basic Omaha Concept No. 2: Play for the Nuts
Because so many cards are in play, the nuts, or best hand possible, is often required to win. This means that if there are three spades out there, your king high flush probably isn’t good enough, and if the board is paired, you are almost certainly losing to a full house. If you are in a pot limit Omaha game and you hold 22QK on a flop of AA2, you should probably check and look to fold. Both the other aces are probably out and will be played by the opponents who have them. This is true in live poker as well as on most poker sites.

If any of the next two cards match any of the other six cards (three each) that they are holding, you will lose. If any of the next two cards matches a pair in any opponent’s hand, you will lose. Your only real chance in this hand is if someone raises the pot before you, it is folded to you and you can re-raise the pot to get it heads up.

Basic Omaha Concept No. 3: Make Opponents Pay to Draw/Be Willing to Pay to Draw Yourself
Most hands of Omaha consist of a player with the nuts against a player or players drawing to the nuts. If you’ve got a made hand, you need to make opponents pay to beat you unless your hand is so vulnerable that anyone who stays in to see another card will almost certainly win (see the AA2 example above).

On the other side, if you are drawing to the nuts, the pot odds are often so good, especially in fixed-limit poker games, that it is worth it to draw at your hand.