Review of Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker

Title:

Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker

Author:

Ken Warren

Publisher:

Cardoza Publishing

Date:

2003

ISBN:

1-58042-102-4

Pages:

222

Price:

$19.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

January 2, 2005

Ken Warren has written several successful poker books for Cardoza Publishing. Most of his books focus on the very popular poker game of Texas Hold'em. He has written one, Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker, that deals with another popular poker game, Omaha.

Warren begins his book with some background material before providing a general introduction to the intricacies of the game of Omaha. He makes the assumption that readers of this book know how to play Hold'em, so Warren provides a lot of information to his audience by way of making comparisons between the two games. If the reader does not know how to play Texas Hold'em, then this book is definitely not for them. Some of the comparisons the author makes are astute, some I don't quite buy, and some seem downright contradictory. For example, Warren asserts that bankroll requirements are higher for Omaha than Hold'em while simultaneously suggesting that Omaha bankrolls experience lower fluctuations.

Because of the number of cards involved and the "two from your hand, three from the board" rule novice Omaha players often make mistakes in reading their hands. Warren provides three chapters devoted to practicing this skill, with chapters on high hands, low hands, and high and low hands. I believe these three chapters could be helpful to an Omaha novice who needs some practice in this area.

At this point, we're a little more than half way through the book when Warren turns his attention to strategic information. A brief chapter on odds provides a gentle introduction to the author's suggestions regarding hand selection. With some exceptions, these suggestions are roughly with those of other authors, but I believe that better advice that's more coherent exists in other books. It is only at this point in the book that it becomes clear to the reader that Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker is focused on limit Omaha High/Low Split poker. That's fine, as there's more than enough to be written about this game to fill a book, but comments by the author earlier on confused me as to whether this would be the case or not.

The book concludes with chapters on "outs", which is essentially about post-flop play, a chapter on tournaments, and playing Omaha on the Internet. Despite a few reservations Warren's post-flop advice seems fairly decent to me, but I was bothered by the final two chapters. The tournament chapter uses Hold'em play for its examples, which seems quite out-of-place. The Internet chapter seems replete with errors and inconsistencies. Some of these may be due to the changing landscape of online poker, but I believe many of these instances are just due to a lack of careful research.

In the end, sloppiness is my main objection to the book as a whole. Warren writes statements that I do not believe to be strictly true. I believe that the author generally has an understanding of the subtleties that underly the statements he makes, but these are not communicated clearly to the reader. As a consequence, I believe that beginning Omaha players are quite likely to be misled by many of the things he writes.

There isn't anything here for intermediate or advanced Omaha High/Low Split players, and I believe that beginners will be better served by other books on this topic. It's certainly possible that a concerted effort to make the book more coherent combined with careful editing could make Winner's Guide to Omaha a decent source on the subject, but because this hasn't happened, I can't recommend this book.

Capsule:

Ken Warren has written Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker for folks who are familiar with Texas Hold'em who would like to learn how to play Omaha High/Low Split. Unfortunately, I believe the book shows a distinct lack of coherence and contains too many inaccuracies to make this a good book on the subject. I would recommend that folks who want to learn this poker game do so from another source.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.