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Reading the board in Omaha

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I don't think there's a more important skill in Omaha than being able to read the board swiftly and accurately. In Omaha, you need to know where you stand at all times, and you need to mentally explore all the different ways a hand can go. Because the differences in starting hands as well as in post-flop hands are a lot smaller than in Holdem, being able to properly assess the possibility of improving your hand as well as that of your opponent improving his, is extremely important. In order to be able to properly read the board in Omaha though, you need to understand what outs, anti-outs and true outs and blockers are.

Let's start with the outs (which I'm quite certain you already know). Your starting hand seldom has the power of standing up to your opponents in Holdem, and even less so in Omaha. In order to improve on your starting hand, you need the board to bring you a card that will make your starting hand better. The cards that you need to improve to probably the best hand at the table, are called outs. Here's an example: you're set-mining with a low pair, which means you're looking to hit a set on the flop. For your pair to improve, it needs to hit a third card of the same kind, and there are two such cards left in the deck (4 altogether - the 2 in your starting hand), which means you're hunting for a 2-outer: you have 2 outs to improve to a set.

The anti-outs can be particularly sneaky and they will most often cost the player who hits them his/her entire stack. The anti-outs give birth to perfect hand situations. They're cards that fill the hand you're looking for, but which - in the same time - give your opponent an even better hand than yours. Here's the example: you're set-mining with a 8d, 8h, while going up against an opponent who has Js, 10s. The flop falls 2s, 4s, 5d and you make the call. The 8s lands on the turn. This card gives you the set you're looking for, almost certainly dragging your stack into the pot head over heels, but in the same time, it fills up your opponent's flush draw, leaving you an almost certain loser. The 8s in the above situation is an anti-out for you.

This reasoning brings us to the true outs. Your true outs are the cards that are going to help your hand without helping that of your opponent, which means the true outs consist of your outs minus your anti-outs. Now, because taking the anti-outs into consideration when you're talking about your outs would be rather foolish, poker players almost always refer to their true outs by simply calling them "outs".

Knowing your true outs can be a lot more difficult than knowing your simple outs (which is basically very simple math), but it can be done, provided you're able to acquire the proper reads on your opponents.

Blockers represent the opposites of anti-outs for you (they basically create anti-outs for your opponents). If you have 3h,4h on a flop of 6h,5h, X, you not only have two of the flush outs in your possession (thus directly impacting your opponent's number of outs), you also have blockers to a straight flush, which means that an opponent holding the nut flush draw cannot have the 2h or the 7h in addition to the ace.

Besides knowing your outs, anti-outs and the whole shebang described above, you should also know that any rakeback or poker propping deal will have a huge impact on every one of the Omaha hands that you play. After all, as a direct result of such a deal, you'll be getting part of your rake back, and that can add up to a lot of money over any significant stretch of time, depending on the stakes/limits you play.

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