Farha on Omaha: Expert Strategy for Beating Cash Games and Tournaments

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To my family, who gave me a love of life. And to the memory of my parents, who gave me the will to succeed.

Contents

Foreword by Lyle Berman

Introduction

From Texas (Hold’em) to Omaha

Part I: Limit Omaha High-Only

Basic Strategy I

Before the Flop I

On the Flop I

Beyond the Flop I

Part II: Omaha/8

Basic Strategy II

Before the Flop II

On the Flop II

Beyond the Flop II

Tournament Strategy II

Part III: Pot-Limit Omaha

Basic Strategy III

Before the Flop III

On the Flop III

Beyond the Flop III

Tournament Strategy III

Heads-Up and the Art of the Deal

Conclusion

About the Authors

Foreword by Lyle Berman

If you want to learn how to play winning Omaha poker, you’d be foolish not to start with what will surely be known as the definitive book on the subject, Farha on Omaha. Throughout its pages renowned poker professional Sam Farha shares with you many of the secrets that have made him one of the world’s best Omaha players.

I can’t emphasize enough what a great player Sammy is. He plays Omaha at the highest level with an expertise very few, if any, other poker pros ever approach. What’s his secret? He puts extreme pressure on his opponents at all times. It’s not unusual to see him raise the pot every hand in a single round. Although his style creates more volatility than most players are used to, at the end of the session Sammy is usually the one holding all the chips.

When we play in the Big Game, all the players, including me, will refuse to play with Sammy if Omaha is the only game on the board. The only way we’ll play Omaha against him is if we throw at least two or three other games into the mix. Otherwise, we’re giving Sammy too big of an edge. If we only played Omaha, he might as well be holding the stone nuts every single hand.

If you’ve never played Omaha before, this book will provide you with an excellent introduction to the game, and if you’re a longtime player looking to take your game to the next level, then look no further. You have found the perfect book, one the poker world has been anticipating for a very long time, as it reveals many things about the game no one has ever put into print.

What makes Sammy’s tips so meaningful is that they’re based on real hands he’s played against the world’s best players. If you absorb even half of the advice he shares with you in this book, you’ll have all the tools you need to be a winning player.

—Lyle Berman

Chairman of the Board for the World Poker Tour

Three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner

Author of I’m All In: Lyle Berman and the Birth of the World Poker Tour

Introduction

While millions of beginning poker players have fallen in love with Texas hold’em in the last five years, most of the top professionals will tell you that Omaha is the more exciting and sophisticated variation of poker. With four starting cards instead of just two as in hold’em, most hands in Omaha seem playable and, if you play the game the way I do, these hands will not only be playable but profitable as well.

There are many false assumptions about Omaha, and one of the biggest is that you can’t bluff, that the best hand is going to win the pot every time. Well, that’s simply not true.

While playing pot-limit Omaha in a cash game at the Golden Nugget in 2005, I made a pot-sized raise before the flop. I am an aggressive player. When I play a hand, I like to come in for a raise. Not only does this get more money in the pot, but it’s also an excellent way to obtain information. When one of the tighter players at the table reraised me, I knew that could only mean one thing: he had a pair of aces in his hand. When I know what my opponent has but he doesn’t know what I have, that gives me a big edge. I called the raise, knowing that if I caught a good flop I could break my opponent.

His raise forced everyone to fold except for me, so we were heads-up when the flop came 9-5-2 with two spades. It completely missed me. I didn’t even have a pair or any sort of draw. First to act, I checked.

My opponent checked behind me, which was suspicious. Nine times out of ten, the pre-flop raiser will bet on the flop. When a player doesn’t bet his hand, he’s giving away information about his cards. That’s one of the main ways I read my opponents, the way they make their bets. His check confirmed my belief that he had aces.

Another spade fell on the turn. Three spades were now on the board, making a flush possible, and I knew he didn’t have it because if he had a flush draw he would have bet the flop. His check on the flop was a sign of weakness, and I intended to take advantage of it.

Representing a flush, I led out for $4,000. I thought that would be enough to make my opponent fold. It wasn’t. He raised me $8,000 more. This raise was as strange as his check on the flop. I knew he didn’t have the flush, just as I knew he only had aces. If he had the nut flush draw, he would have bet the flop, but he hadn’t. Thinking through the way he had played his hand, I decided that he had the dry ace, that one of his aces was a spade, but he didn’t have another spade to go with it. He was trying to represent having made the nut flush, but I knew he was bluffing.

Most players would have folded their hands in this situation because, despite knowing what my opponent had, I was still in a very bad spot. I didn’t have a flush either—or even a straight draw for that matter—and he had more money on the table than I did. I only had $12,000 in front of me. I could only reraise him $4,000 more, and I didn’t think he was going to muck his hand for $4,000. There was no way.

The reason I didn’t give up on this hand is that I don’t play the cards. I play the player. I knew I could take this pot away from my opponent. All I had to do was think of an act.

After a few minutes, I looked at him and said, You’re so lucky it’s unbelievable. I flopped top set and gave you a free card and then you hit your flush on me. What the hell am I going to do? I flopped top set. I have to go all in or muck my hand, right?

I talked to him like this for about five minutes, putting it in his head that I had a set but was scared of the flush even though I knew he didn’t have a flush. On and on I went while the whole table watched and listened. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar.

Finally I said, Maybe you have the flush, but I have top set. I’ve got some outs. I have to reraise you.

I pushed my last $4,000 into the center of the table, and you know what he did? He mucked his hand! He shook his head and said, You win, Sammy, and threw his cards away.

There were some very good players sitting at that table, and I wanted them all to know that I could bluff any of them at any time.

I never show my hand, I said to them, but I’ve got to show you guys this one.

I turned over my cards, showing them that I had won the pot with absolutely nothing, no pair, not even a draw.

* * *

In the ebbs and flows of poker history there has always been one variation of the game that is more beloved than all the others. When Johnny Moss took several million dollars off Nick the Greek Dandalos in Benny Binion’s Horseshoe casino in 1951, the two men played a variety of games but the most popular—at their table as well as in the poker-playing community at large—was five-card stud. Over the course of the next several decades seven-card stud supplanted the five-card version as the game of choice among those who played poker for a living. Then in 1963 Corky McCorquodale introduced Texas hold’em to Las Vegas’s California Club, and from there the game spread like wildfire to the most popular poker rooms in the city: the Golden Nugget, the Stardust, and the Dunes. Limit hold’em reached the height of its popularity in the 1980s just about the time Omaha was arriving on the scene.

Limit Omaha was an immediate hit with professional poker players when it first appeared in Las Vegas casinos in 1982. By the mid-1980s it could be found just about everywhere poker was played. In the two-plus decades that have since passed, the game has become a fixture in casinos all over the world as well as in cyberspace. It is by far the most popular poker game in Europe, and yet in America it continues to play second fiddle to Texas hold’em. American players love hold’em because it’s simple to learn and easy to follow on television.

Many of these players who were first introduced to poker watching hold’em on television have since become students of the game, reading as many of the countless hold’em strategy books that are on the market as they can digest. As these fish have grown increasingly less fishy, the average game of hold’em found in a casino is getting harder and harder to beat. In search of new money-making opportunities, many of these players have started to seek other types of poker to play. The most logical choice for such players is Omaha, hold’em’s close cousin.

The game has long enjoyed a reputation for attracting players who love to gamble. Because those unfamiliar with it are unable to distinguish good starting hands from bad ones, it’s not uncommon to see five or six players paying to see a flop, creating massive pots and plenty of action. For this reason, some players started calling Omaha the action game when it was first introduced into Las Vegas casinos in the 1980s; others called it the game of the future. Well, the future is now.

Featured in every major casino and online card room in the world, Omaha is currently enjoying a renaissance. Just as Texas hold’em replaced seven-card stud as the most popular variation of poker in the world, I believe Omaha will be supplanting hold’em in the very near future.

* * *

I started playing poker in the late 1980s in small home games in Houston. In those days I played all kinds of crazy games, games like King and Little, which is basically five-card draw with kings and the smallest card in your hand wild, and double Omaha, which is Omaha played with two different boards. Playing so many different variations of poker helped me to develop my poker mind. Although Omaha remains my best game, I can play all the other forms of poker, games like stud or badugi or razz, equally well. Every poker game is basically the same. You need to know what the best hand is and what the worst is, and that’s about it.

I learned how to play Omaha by playing the limit version for very small stakes. I never made much money playing limit, but that’s still the best way to learn how to play the game. You have to climb a ladder step by step. Only after I had mastered the basics and gained some confidence did I start playing pot-limit.

The first time I played Omaha in a casino was in 1990 at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. I was staying at the Golden Nugget, and I had about $2,000 in my pocket when I first arrived. I had never played blackjack before but decided to play with a friend of mine. Big mistake. In about five minutes I lost $1,500.

Let’s find a poker room, I told my friend. Take me to the Horseshoe.

We walked across the street to Binion’s.

Do you want to go in with me? I asked my friend. $500 each and we’ll split the winnings?

Yeah, sure.

I played $5/$10 pot-limit Omaha and won $6,000.

That’s good enough for me, my friend said. Cut me out. I’m falling asleep.

You sure? I asked.

Yeah, that’s fine. Good luck to you. I hope you win more.

I gave him half of what I’d won, and then sat down to play some more. I ended up winning $12,000.

I was hooked.

I started coming to Las Vegas more and more after that, but it wasn’t like it is today where every casino has its own poker room and they’re all packed with amateurs looking to have a good time. There were very few card rooms in Las Vegas back then, and no one played poker in the casinos for entertainment. If you were looking to play for entertainment, you played at home with your friends. For those who played in the casinos poker was their job, and for me it was no different. I wanted to make a living playing the game, and I thought playing Omaha gave me the best chance to do that because it’s an action game. There’s more money in Omaha than in any other poker game.

I never liked playing Texas hold’em all that much. In those days you couldn’t make $500 a day playing hold’em. All the games were so small and the players were extremely tight. The old pros just sat there all day waiting for pocket aces or kings. That’s not my style. There wasn’t enough action for me playing hold’em so I concentrated on Omaha. It was the perfect game for me. There were so many bad players and so much action. Bad players love this game because there’s so much money involved. The pots get so big it’s worth it for them to chase. In a typical game you can usually count on getting five-way action so if you call $100 before the flop and you hit your hand, you stand to win at least $400 and perhaps a lot more if someone chases you all the way.

I started making a living playing pot-limit Omaha right away, and I managed myself well. I slowly built up my bankroll and never risked more than a certain percentage of it during any given session. To survive as a professional poker player, you have to have great money management. If you don’t, one bad run could break you. The money management skills I learned out of necessity 20 years ago are still ingrained in my head. Just the other night, I flopped a big wrap, the strongest draw in Omaha. If this hand had occurred earlier in the evening, I would have shoved all my money into the pot, knowing I was favored to win, but it was the last hand of the night, and I didn’t want to risk losing what I had fought so hard to win over the course of the session. So I mucked my cards and went home a happy winner.

What helped me become a consistent winner when I was first starting to play professionally was the image I portrayed at the table. I would dress nicely and I would play a lot of hands and I would play them aggressively, and that made people think I had a lot of money and that I didn’t know how to play. They thought I was a tourist. They used to laugh at me. They used to say, Sammy is a producer. Sammy is an Arab sheik. Whenever I sat down at a table, there would be a long list of people who wanted to sit at my table. Nobody knew I only had $4,000 in my pocket. They all thought I was an oil tycoon who was going to make them rich. They eagerly waited to play against me, and I would stay at that table until I had broken every last one of them.

After six years focusing almost entirely on Omaha, I grew quite proficient at the game, good enough to win my first World Series of Poker bracelet.

Occasionally some other player would say to me, Sammy, you need to start playing other games.

Why? If I’ve got you playing my game, why do I need to learn some other game? And then I would laugh. This game’s been really good to me.

* * *

Throughout this book I’m going to be describing many different situations you’ll be facing at the tables, and from time to time I will advise you to muck your cards because it’s not worth it to continue. What I mean by this is that you don’t have the correct pot odds, the amount of money in the pot versus the amount of money it will cost you to call, to continue in the hand.

Every decision you have to make at a poker table is influenced by pot odds. When your pot odds are low (the size of the bet you face is high compared to the size of the pot), you are going to need a very strong hand to call. If your pot odds are high (the size of the bet you face is small compared to the size of the pot) you don’t need as strong of a hand. For example, if there’s $1,000 in the pot and your opponent bets his last $100 on the flop, you’re getting 10-1 pot odds so you should call with any hand that gives you better than a 10-1 chance of winning the pot.

To determine the odds of making your hand, you first need to figure out what the ratio of outs (the number of cards in the deck that will make your hand) you have is compared to the number of cards left in the deck that won’t make your hand. If you have the nut flush draw with one card to come, you have nine outs. Of the 52 cards in the deck, 44 of them are unknown to you (you know the four cards in your hand as well as the four on the board). Of these 44 cards, 35 of them won’t help you make your flush so the odds of you making your hand are 35-9 or a little under 4-1.

With two cards to come the odds of making certain hands get a bit more complicated. Because I like to keep my mind free to concentrate on other aspects of the situation, mostly my opponent’s behavior, I have memorized the odds of making