So the game is $5-$100 spread limit—$100 is the max bet (and if someone bets $100, the most you can raise is to $200.) Blinds are $5 and $5 with a mandatory $10 straddle in the UTG spot.

I have only seen Omaha on tv and even had to double check the rules before I played (the “you must use exactly two hole cards” tripped me up a bit.) I’m exclusively a Hold’em player.

I bought in for $300 a time, lost my first two buyins, then had this hand. Is any part of it even remotely justifiable?

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I’m the $10 straddle with a $300 stack. CO raises to $40, Button calls, SB calls, Bb calls, I call in the straddle with AcJh4h3.

Flop is QcTh6s. SB bets the $100 max, BB calls. I call too? I have $160 left. The other two guys call too.

Turn 2h. SB bets $100, BB calls. I call again! I have only $60 left. The other two guys call too, again!

River is a 7h. I hit a flush! But it’s not the nuts. SB bets $100, BB calls, I call for less. The other two guys fold.

And my flush was good! The SB had a set of sixes!

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Was this just total donkey play by me all around? Did I do anything right? You can be honest, I know I don’t know how to play!

Can you explain your thought processes behind any of your decisions please?

I'm reasonably confident you already know the answer to your question. Are you a winning NLHE player?

Well preflop, I figured, I’m closing the action, $30 more with $170 out there, and I know you can never be TOO far behind in Omaha, and I am double suited and there’s some connectivity in my cards (AJ34), so yeah, go for it.

Flop, I’m sure that’s just completely inexcusable, but, I don’t know, a gutter and two backdoor flush draws, $100 to call with $400 in the pot, and two guys to act after me…are we in the ballpark of it being a close decision, or is this the most obvious fold in the world?

Turn call I assume is obvious—I pick up another gutter and a flush draw, and now I’m getting like 9:1 on my money—but, again, not sure, I’ve never done this before.

I think so. Extremely small sample size, but through 350 hours of live play my win rate is a touch over 20 BBs per hour.

Fold pre and fold flop - calling flop is a much larger error than calling pre, though pre is honestly kind of dicey as well.

Omaha has a learning curve and you will need to learn relative hand strength is different from NL hold em.

There are plenty of resources available to learn more about starting hand selection and other basic strategy if you want to learn more before playing again.

But for a lot of people, playing will still be the best way to learn, just play very tight until you have a better grasp or be prepares to dump some buy-ins as an investment for future profitability.

Closing the action is of some value but postflop playability and the ease of making the nuts is more important even than your odds (in general). Nuttiness is the order of the day.

In terms of making a straight, you're obviously aware that you're not getting direct odds on your gutshot, and so you'll need implied odds. Rarely in NLHE do you draw to a nut straight and then end up chopping, but it happens a lot in PLO, particularly multiway; on top of that, you can't just count the implied odds of making your hand as that leading to you winning the whole pot all of the time, as they will often have a flush and/or boat redraw.

Preflop you left off the suit of the last card so I assumed you were single-suited and not to the A. If you're double-suited to the A and the J then preflop is fine. But flop is total spew. Turn is whatever. If you've got that far, okay I guess, you should probably still fold, but it's a much smaller mistake than the flop.

cant be overstated how big of a mistake flop is both in practice and understanding the game. plo is alot harder to just sit down and play than nl imo

He did mention in his second post that it was double suited. +1 flop total spew

I’m sorry, yes. AcJh4h3c. So suited Ace and suited Jack.

Which makes preflop standard, albeit without necessarily accounting for the difference that the weird limit structure makes which I guess is to encourage made hands over drawing hands a little.

This is all very helpful. Yeah, I knew when I sat down that I was an obvious mark—the fish—and that my only shot at making money was to get lucky or cooler someone. At the time on the flop I was just like “I’m on my third buy-in but right now I have a shot at quadrupling up and winning the biggest pot of my life.” Pure gambler mentality. I was hoping the two backdoor flush draws on the flop (in addition to the gutshot) were enough to turn my call from “inexcusably, objectively terrible” to merely “a little loose” but I see I couldn’t even get that close.

Oh well—I just wanted to take a shot once. I won’t be coming back. I did have a lot of fun (the players are so much nicer—the atmosphere so much more relaxing—at the higher stakes.) But I’m definitely sticking to Hold’em from here on out!

Your 2 bdfds turn the flop play from "inexcusably, objectively terrible" to "inexcusably, objectively slightly less terrible".

Haha. Fair!

I’m now feeling much much better about my decision to leave the game when I did (up $1170), since, from the sound of this, the longer I played the more inevitable it was they were gonna take all my money.

I was checking my stats and, despite my being a big winning Hold’em player, I play at such low limits that THIS was the single biggest pot I’ve ever won. And I played it TERRIBLY!!!! Lol

How else are you going to learn .. right? GII and see how it works out!

Some good responses for you already ..

1) While you are drawing to the nut straight .. yes, it will be a chop 'a lot'. Or you don't get paid for hitting an obvious made hand that a 2-card rookie is betting!

2) While I do look at 'cards to improve' when floating about half of yours aren't 'nut' friends with both the heart flush and straight using the 6 will not be nut hands. You really need to discount/be aware of these when considering a float. I'd be much happier with the Qh on the Board rather than the Th .. YES, PLO is that subtle when it comes to taking edges off variance.

3) While the thought process that 'you're never priced out of a PLO hand' is pretty true, you actually end up making what looks like absurd folds to the NL guys way more often. What you need to do is become mentally 'OK' with how far you take variance and then just play the game. Some Players will NEVER call down with a T-high flush facing 'action' and others don't care as much and may consider 7-high as the threshold. 'Bottom' Boats .. like 86 on 88T96 .. may win you some large pots, but they wont come around as often as you'd like them to. How about Trips? You dumping money in on 88T Flop holding 8764? Cuz I know you're gonna play it .. it's so pretty! Bad straight draw with 3 unders to the Ten? Please, please, please come to our table!

4) It's good that you're 'checking your work' .. PLO is fun and I will always play it if I have a choice. But don't get caught up in the appearance of craziness. HU PLO is actually pretty straight forward, but when you end up 3-4 ways you will get enamored by the large pots and MUST NOT play the same range as you would HU.

5) Spread Limit is really protecting you from the pain of PLO .. learn and enjoy it while you can. GL

That’s very sweet of you, but this was purely a one-time, extremely foolish experiment for me, haha. Sticking to the two-card game from now on!

(What made the experiment even dumber than normal is that not only was it my first time playing Omaha, but I was playing WAY above my bankroll. It would have been like if in the opening scene of Rounders Mike was playing Teddy KGB in razz cuz he’d seen it on ESPN the night before.)

Unless you study and spend some hours, good idea.

Flop is really, really bad. You just can't draw gutshots and two bdfds for that price and I think you should know that from Hold Em background as well. 5 ways, AJ with bdfd from that action and position should be a relatively easy fold when having reads that the original bettor has it in NLHE. In Omaha, someone has a made hand here. It's not that more complex in situations like this.