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[rxq]

Playing tight in loose games.Starting hand guidelines for beginnersYou want give Omaha HL a try, and you want to play tight against a sea of maniacs, but you don’t know how. In Hold’em the principle of hand strength and position are pivotal to decided whether you should play a hand. In the early position, you have several books recommending that, you don’t bet unless you have cards like A-A, A-Ks. K-K, Q-Q, A-K Q-Ks. Some books also refer to playing tight by playing only tens and picture cards, when you are playing from any position. This strategy is often use by new player in order to minimize loses. With holdem choosing cards is relatively easy . There are 169 starting combinations and choosing a tight starting hands can be considered just a matter of excluding undesirable cards. If you just play tens and picture cards, then you exclude 36 cards. In the early position, you are using 12 cards from the deck if you use Aces Kings and Queens for your Hold’em starting hand.In Omaha H/L you have 5,278 commonly dealt hands( 270,725 combinations), so coming up with a good starting hand may seem monumental. But If you start excluding cards, you can come up with parameters for a starting hands for different playing positions in a loose game with 5 or more calling. In a ten handed game 45 cards out of 52 are used in the game, so high hands are usually the status quo. Straights flushes, and full house usually win the high hand, seldom do you see two pair win, except when there is four people going for the low. The low usually has the Ace or a two, you rarely see hands win the low a Three, as the lowest card. So what makes a tight hand in Omaha H/L?:Having four playable cards. You should avoid three leg hands. It should have an Ace, according to Bill Boston 1,339 commonly dealt hands do.(726 of these, he has shown to be profitable)You should play for the high and the low. You should have cards that can win both. Scooping the pot is always sweeter than half a pot. And depending on who you listen to, low hands only win 35-50% of the time. To start out with, exclude hands with one or more 6,7,8,9. You should excludes hands that have 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J in them, from the early position or if you are playing very tight.Also from the early positions you should only play hands that are double suited or single suited with the Ace. From the middle and late positions single suited hands with a queens or higher. Flushes with less than a Queen, seldom win with 5 callers at the river. Stay away from non suited A-2-x-x or A-3-x-x unless you are in the big or small blind and there are no raisers. So using this method, The best starting hands in the early position should contain at least an Ace with either a K,Q,2,3, and hands should be double suited with chance to win the high and low. According to Bill Boston, the best hand is A-A-2-3 double suit. In 10,000 trial computer run, it won 42.2% of the time. In the middle position add the 4, and 10,J (only if there is a higher card.)In the late positions, stay away from 6,7,8,9.In the later positions you may want to play, just the high, or just the low.If you play Quality cards, you will be folding a lot of hands. You will not be losing as much, if you play tight, as you start out learning to play this game. As you become more experience and read more, you will see more options in your starting hands. References: Bill Boston, Omaha High Low, Playing to win with odds.Shane Smith, Omaha Hi-Lo Poker