The siren call of Omaha

Though this may seem prideful, I know I'm a very good Hold'em player (recent results notwithstanding). I don't feel very challenged by it any more, though. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing it quite a lot. However, I want more of a challenge. I realize now that I wimped out on Omaha the first time I tried it; I was trying to judge it by Hold'em standards, instead of by its own. Omaha is a devilishly difficult game, and for that very reason I find myself being drawn back to it. Whether I'm actually being drawn back to Omaha itself, or to my idealized vision of what Omaha should be, I'm not sure yet.

So here's what I propose: when I hit the play million mark again, I'll give Omaha another shot. This time, I'll be prepared to accept a lot more volatility in my results. I won't even think about the golden ratio, or losing streaks, or gambling away my Hold'em winnings. I won't complain about the quality of Omaha player I encounter, either. My aim will simply be to learn and master the intricacies of Omaha.

On Tuesday night, I lost half my stack in the first third of the session, then won it all back and more in the latter two thirds.

delta: $13,771
balance: $900,820

Hold'em is from Mars, Omaha is from Venus

Already, after only two sessions of Omaha, I can see that it's an immensely more subtle game than Hold'em, and therefore potentially immensely more satisfying. I feel like I've been playing a kid's game for the better part of two years, and now I've discovered a different game which requires exponentially more maturity and expertise. I wonder how anyone who masters Omaha could ever go back to Hold'em. I'll have to try to find out. If I ever mastered Omaha, I don't think I'd be able to go back to Hold'em; it would be like trying to enjoy Tic Tac Toe after you've mastered chess.

Last night, I was a folding machine at the first table I joined, until I finally got impatient and hit the felt on a hand which I stubbornly wouldn't give up on. I'd noticed that the level of aggression at the table was very high, and thought I could turn it to my advantage; the problem was, I didn't (and still don't) have a good feel for Omaha probabilities. At the next table I joined, everyone was playing relatively tight compared to the first table, which was fine with me; I was able to recover my losses and get back into the black again. My last hand of the night, I won a pot worth $4,940 with three of a kind, nines.

delta: $2,713
balance: $1,044,572

Auspicious start

Last night, I had an auspicious start playing PLO (pot limit Omaha) for the first time. Since I'm a newbie to Omaha, I joined a $5/$10 table instead of a $100/$200 table. I'd read some good introductory information on Omaha beforehand, so I was well prepared to fold early and often.

Unfortunately, for some reason PokerStars doesn't make play money Omaha tables available on their .com site, so I had to use their .net site instead; a big drawback of using the .net site is that it doesn't make hand histories available, the way the .com site does. Therefore, for the time being I won't be able to study the hands I've played. My first step will be to send a friendly email to PokerStars, asking why the only play money tables on their .com site are Hold'em tables, and requesting that they make play money Omaha tables available as well. If that doesn't get results, I'll definitely consider writing a program to save the hand histories myself; that's one of the advantages of being a computer programmer!

I forgot to save the stats from the session, but I think I played around 50 - 60 hands and won 3 or 4 of them. I actually played at two tables since everyone eventually deserted the first table I joined. My final hand, I won a pot worth $5,870 with a full house, queens full of kings.

Seeing that I had more than quadrupled my initial stack of $2,000, I decided to augment my poker database to be able to see where that session stood in terms of percent gain on initial stack size; it came in fourth of 268 sessions, with a percent gain of 311.75. Not bad for my first crack at a new game!

delta: $6,235
balance: $1,041,859