Omaha: Watch out for defensive players
Limit Omaha, in particular, can have multitudes of extremely defensive players, who will not open up their game until the river – once they are sure that they have the pure nuts. This is significant because you must learn to resist the temptation to raise the river when this highly defensive player comes out betting.
For example, I was once in a hand where I had K-Q-Q-J and the flop was Q-10-8. As you could imagine, I was betting and raising at every opportunity, but there was one player sitting quietly in the corner of the table who simply called every bet and raise thrown at him. The turn was a 5 and the river was a 3. All of a sudden, this quiet player in the corner fires in a bet. Now this sort of player is unlikely to draw with 3-3 in the hole and probably wouldn’t bet, even if he made a small set on the river. So more often than not, this player will have the pure nuts: J-9 and unfortunately, you can’t beat that.
You may wonder why this player never bet his hand earlier. The answer is mostly psychological: there are many potential draws against his hand and he’s frightened to get heavily involved because he’s ended up losing so many pots in this spot when an ugly river card fell. As a result, he will not bet or raise until he gets the all clear with an innocuous river cad. Yet, he can’t fold before the river, no matter what the price, simply because he has the nuts! Now this seems to be a backwards way to play the hand, but you will find these sorts of defensive players in Omaha and as a result, you need to take care when they come out betting on the river, irrespective of how strong your hand is (unless you have the pure nuts of course!).
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