Slow Playing Pocket Aces Preflop In Omaha High
One of the most common mistakes beginners make in Omaha High is overplaying pocket aces in deep stack situations. When it is a low stack game and you can get a large amount of chips in the middle preflop, it makes sense to make a pot size bet with pocket aces.
However in deep stack situations when you have aces with not so good two remaining cards and you are out of position you should not overvalue the strength of your hand. Pocket aces develop themselves well only when they hit a set. And as the set does not come very often (about once every 7.5 occasions) it does not make sense to tell everyone preflop that you have pocket aces. There is another reason for slow playing pocket aces in Omaha High more often than in Hold’em: when you hit your set, your opponent will not put you on a set if you did not raise preflop.
Now I show you a perfect example of how you can maximize your win with pocket aces in Omaha High.
The game is $2/$4 Omaha High with 6 players. The cutoff player makes a min raise to $8 (his stack size is $801.70) and I sit in the hijack with ♠A♥Q♣A♥7 and a $348.80 stack behind me. There are two more players after me. A pot size raise would not involve a large amount of my chips preflop and my pair of aces does not have the best connecting cards. I decide to make the $8 call and wait for what the other players do. The cutoff calls but the blinds fold. The pot is $30 and the three of us are still in action.
A draw heavy combination of cards hit the board: ♣3♦A♣6. The original bettor bets two-thirds of the pot, $20. This is a nice situation because
I have the nuts with the set of aces and my opponent is the one making the bet. I have to make a pot size reraise because of the draw heavy board. It does not make sense anymore to slow play my aces because there are many scary cards that can come on turn. I have to narrow the field and make the player behind me fold his hand. The best case scenario is to get all the chips in the middle now or win the pot right there. I reraise to $90 and the player in the cutoff folds.
This is when my preflop play can pay out very well since I did not show any sign of strength preflop. Therefore my opponent is not likely to put me on a set of aces. The conclusion is that he might reraise with two pairs or a small set. If the board were ♣3♦A♥8 then my opponent could be more suspicious because there are not many draws on the board and a set of aces has a higher probability. On the other side the ♣3♦A♣6 board gives so many draws that someone with two pairs or a small set might think of being ahead.
My opponent reraises to $300, I push all-in and he makes the call. He turns up ♥A♣7♦6♥8. This is the best possibility that I could have imagined! He has no straight or flush draw. As I hoped he only has two pairs and he put me on a draw because of my passive preflop play. He only has a backdoor straight draw or runner-runner sixes and no other possibilities. The turn card is the ♦J and it already wins the hand for me. The river card (♦9) is irrelevant and I win a $711.60 pot.
As you can see, the preflop slow playing strategy paid out as I misled my opponent completely. The same outcome would probably not have happened if I reraised him preflop. This hand shows perfectly that with little tricks and caution you can set up a large win later on in the hand.
I wish you good luck and suggest you play poker and register a new poker account.
Related articles:
Making the perfect read in Omaha High
Pushing All-In With A Multi Draw Hand In Omaha High
Running it twice in online poker
Draw only to the nuts in Omaha High
Omaha high: the game of draws and action
