Omaha H/L: Single Straight Draws

You're in the big blind. You look at the flop and then down at your cards and voila, you have an open ended straight draw. Should you continue with the hand? How about if there is any kind of action?

Today I will give you a test. Look at the first chart below and decide how many of the starting hands combined with the given flops you would play. Would you play them for a single bet? Write down answers before you continue and look at the second chart.

Let me advise you as to how I set this simulation up and explain the chart. I dealt this flop 1,000,000 times to a tight player sitting at a tight full table, holding the indicated hands. None of the cards held by our tight player were suited thereby eliminating any flush possibilities.

The flop was rainbow. I chose these particular cards so that there would only be one straight draw. Except for the first line, the straight draws are all open ended. Additionally only the first hand would have the nut low draw.

The "Made" column indicates how often a straight was completed and the "% Won" indicates how often the straight won. I should mention the our tight player for all but the A-4-T-K only saw the flop, turn and river about 5% of the time. This would indicate that once committed passed the flop, the hand was played to the river. The hands are arranged in no special order of relevance except that the first hand was not open ended. The T-K-3-4 while second in frequency completed maintained the highest win percent of 82.5%. The A-4- T-K with the nut low draw while completed the most could only manage a win percentage of 67.6%. The second worst! The least completed 6-9-2-Q had the sixth highest win percent. So which hands would you play? Can you rank the hands in terms of profitability?

If you have read my article you should know that profitability and win percent are not correlated. A high win percent is not indicative of a winning hand. A low win percent is not indicative of a loosing hand and visa versa. The only true measure of profitability is net win. In Omaha H/L or any split pot high/low game, you may experience a 100% win percentage and loss money every time you play the hand. This occurs when the high hand collects half the pot and you must split the low with the high or all the remaining callers. You will receive one quarter of the pot or less.

Before we look at the second chart let me clarify one more point. Our tight player only played the 4-7-T-K, 5% of the time. That is approximately 50,000 times out of 1,000,000. Let me further point out that our tight player would have started with this hand from the big blind 100,000 times. It is logical that with this hand he only saw the flop when he could get in cheaply. Now lets take a look at the second chart.

The difference between these two charts is that here we are looking at the net win. This is how much money we earned or lost when playing this hand. The "W %" is now the win percent as compared to the total number of hands played. As I have stated many times before, win percent, in and of itself is irrelevant in determining whether a hand is profitable or not.

So were you able to pick the only profitable hand and the worst? The A-4-T-K is profitable but not because of it's straight potential. Remember it had the second worse percentage for winning with a straight. There are no doubts about it. This hand is profitable because of its nut low potential. Only one of the four fives would complete the straight while any of the twelve other remaining low cards (6-8), would complete a low. The hand with the draw to the nut high straight, which had the best win percentage when making the straight, came in second best, but is still a losing hand. It will cost you on average 67 cents. Amazingly the 2-5-T-K, which is very similar to the A-4-T-K, except your low draw is to the second nut low, cannot show a profit. It will cost you $1.04 on average each time you play it. This once again reinforces the concept that in Omaha H/L you want to be drawing to the nuts.

It should be apparent that pursuing a straight draw, even an open ended straight draw is a losing proposition. Your straight draws need some help as in being coupled with a nut low draw. Also note the A-4-T-K is not open ended. Would two straight draws perform better? How about if our straight draws are coupled with a flush draw or pair on the flop? So what have we learned? Single straight draws in and of themselves are not worth pursuing whether they are high or low straight draws. They all need some additional redraw help as in being coupled with the nut low draw. Next time we will take a look at what to expect when we add some help as in the form of a flush draw and maybe flopping a pair.