I have been working on my NL holdem game, but at pretty much treading water at it. One thing that I think hurts my games is good Omaha/8 play. In Omaha, you pretty much know where you stand in the hand in relation to the board and the decisions are black and white. In Holdem, you rarely know where you stand in the relation to the board and the the decisions are more grey.

Example: you have 99AK in Omaha and 99 in Holdem on a 9 6 5 flop. You lead out in both cases and get called. The turn brings a 7 and a flush board. In Omaha, if someone check called the flop and then leads out, you are 95% of the time behind. In Holdem, it depends.

Is this scenerio of strong Omaha/ weak Holdem in my head, or do other good Omaha players feel the same way when they go over to play Holdem?

Can you be a strong Omaha player and I strong Holdem player as well?

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: If I am a strong Omaha player and make a good profit at it, why do I feel like I should improve at Holdem / other poker games? Why do I feel like being a specialist (PL Omaha 8) is not being a strong poker player?

Tom

I do think it affects holdem skills as I think it has affected mine. Its an adjustment. Going from PLO to HE, you see every card that completes a draw as a danger because in PLO, that draw is almost always out there.

You just have to learn to adjust but thats hard as I'm still working on it. Trying to get better at all games is normally a sign of a competive person, IMO. I want to improve and its hard. Also, if you are good at both, its a nice change of pace to play a different game for a while. I'm currently in my PLO stage.

I can name 10 players that are better at texas hold em than anyone on this board that are also better at omaha than anyone on this board. Did I mention stud and all of its variations, as well as lowball games?

The point is the best players in the well play top notch at EVERYTHING, so clearly you can be great at more than one game. I like to think I am a strong all around player. Certainly playing all Omaha will make you worse at hold em, but thats merely because you arent playing hold em anymore, not because you are playing omaha and getting good at that.

Some thoughts:

- NLHE is more about playing people than playing the cards, imho. It is necessary to be able to put people on hands (almost always less than the nuts), and you need to know when you can make them lay their hand down. You certainly need to know the numbers, but you won't be a big winner if you just play your cards.

- Playing Omaha has definitely helped refine my board reading skills. They are MUCH faster and accurate, and I am better at calculating the odds of draws that I and my opponents may have. Keep in mind that I only started playing poker in April, so maybe that doesn't help most people.

- One thing I learned about reading hands is that even in O8 with a family pot of people holding 4 cards, there are orphan pots. I am learning when and how to take down these kinds of pots, and I think it is helping the bottom line a few BB/100. If nothing else, this aggression definitely helps me get action when I make big hands. Anyway, this aspect of O8 has helped me realize that people miss the flop more than they hit it, and this intuitive sense of when people hit or miss is very valuable.

- I agree that I tend to see "monsters" lurking behind every drawing hand in hold 'em, at least when I first sit down at a table. That's one reason I like to watch a few hands (sometimes a lot) to see what people are showing down. It helps me change gears.

- I agree with Xaston that all GREAT players will be really good at all games -- the abstract principles are the same, it's just a matter of adjusting to the specific game and the specific table. On the other hand, I don't particularly care if people respect me as a good all-around "poker player", as I get more than enough satisfaction watching my bank account getting bigger and bigger due to my part-time hobby.

- I enjoy playing poker, but I mainly play to win money. O8 is a cash cow for me, so until that changes or until I find a fatter cow, I am not going to spend much effort refining my skills at a new game. That being said, when the time comes to change games, I am sure that I will be up to the task.