Nut-Hand Strategy in Omaha Poker

The nut-hand strategy in Omaha poker is proven to often get more chips into the pot. Thus, the coined phrase "driving the pot" when a game of Omaha is played loosely and our hand can position us to get other players to chip-in contributions in the pot—for us.

To influence the pot size, driving the pot needs influential nut hands to keep funds pouring into the pot for us. All we want in this case is a nut—a nut flush, a nut low, a nut anything. If there is any possibility to form a flush, we prefer it to be a nut flush, and so on. Gaining some control of the pot means our hands should be authoritative at the table in a particular game. We need winning hands, not the second or third best Omaha poker hand. Winning is the obvious reason for the nut hand, but not the only reason.

Pot fund raising is also the reason why we need the nut hands. We need sufficient hand influence to gain some control of the pot. The basic principle here is to play aggressively when we have a strong hand to goad other players to bet and raise to build the pot, or go easy on the play when the hand is not that strong to influence. Thus, we see the relevance of nut hands and draws—they can help us considerably in driving the pot like crazy.

We need to see the big difference when having KK or JJ, for example. We need to see their bearing on pot sizes. Obviously, KK can out-perform JJ in pot-building. Let's try to see them against a background of a board KQQ7 on the turn against a board JQQ7. We see the possible scenarios we can have here with a KK and with a JJ. These two pairs have different ways of influencing the pot and we would be better off opting for the best pair in Omaha if we want to take a full pot.

In the same way, A23x is quite different from A2xx when we consider a flop showing 87K. The hand A2xx has lesser capability of influencing pot odds. Aside from being an unlikely hand winner in the end, it could not come up with as big a pot as the A23x could.

The more helpful a hand is in enlarging the pot size—like hands A256, A269, and A247—the better we can position for more wins from the pot.