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A brief excerpt from
Farha on Omaha
"I started playing poker in the late-1980s in small home games in Houston. In those days I played all kinds of crazy games, games like King and Little, which is basically five-card draw with kings and the smallest card in your hand wild, and double Omaha, which is Omaha played with two different boards. Playing so many different variations of poker helped me to develop my poker mind. Although Omaha remains my best game, I can play all the other forms of poker, games like stud or badugi or razz, equally well. Every poker game is basically the same. You need to know what the best hand is and what the worst is, and that’s about it.
I learned how to play Omaha by playing the limit version for very small stakes. I never made much money playing limit, but that’s still the best way to learn how to play the game. You have to climb a ladder step by step. Only after I had mastered the basics and gained some confidence did I start playing pot-limit.
The first time I played Omaha in a casino was in 1990 at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. I was staying at the Golden Nugget, and I had about $2,000 in my pocket when I first arrived. I had never played blackjack before but decided to play with a friend of mine. Big mistake. In about five minutes I lost $1,500.
“Let’s find a poker room,” I told my friend. “Take me to the Horseshoe.”
We walked across the street to Binion’s.
“Do you want to go in with me?” I asked my friend. “$500 each and we’ll split the winnings?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I played $5/$10 pot-limit Omaha and won $6,000.
“That’s good enough for me,” my friend said. “Cut me out. I’m falling asleep.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Good luck to you. I hope you win more.”
I gave him half of what I’d won, and then sat down to play some more. I ended up winning $12,000.
I was hooked. I started coming to Las Vegas more and more after that, but it wasn’t like it is today where every casino has its own poker room and they’re all packed with amateurs looking to have a good time. There were very few cardrooms in Las Vegas back then, and no one played poker in the casinos for entertainment. If you were looking to play for entertainment, you played at home with your friends. For those who played in the casinos poker was their job, and for me it was no different. I wanted to make a living playing the game, and I thought playing Omaha gave me the best chance to do that because it’s an action game. There’s more money in Omaha than in any other poker game." |
