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When a pair hits the board in Omaha hi/lo you should do the obvious thing, which is think that there is a great possibility that someone has just hit their full house, or even quads. Lets look at an example.

Let’s say you have A / 3/ 5 / 9 of which the Ace and 9 are spades and the 3 and 5 are diamonds. Let’s say the flop comes 2 / 10 / 10. Two of which are spades. You are not in two bad of a position here. Although you should think to yourself – “man, I can’t believe a pair hit the board – sigh.” Full houses happen like this all the time. All someone one needs is a 10. Even if they don’t have the 2 right away, they have 13 outs to catch either the full house or quads in this situation. That means they have a %53 percent chance to win this hand with quads or a full house. Not to mention that they are already killing you with trips on the flop. You do however have a chance to get the low hand, but in this case, it would involve getting runner runner cards that are below 8 and are not 2’s. Depending on the bet on the flop, you should definitely consider folding this hand while you can before you are suckered into going for your “nut” flush draw and losing your whole chip stack to somebody that is laughing at the fact they just took all your money.

It is rarer that someone will not beat you when the board pairs, especially on the flop, because even though (like the example above) both players are usually drawing for a better hand, the person who just caught their trips on the flop are usually ahead. They person hold the trips has three ways to win now. They could raise and get you to fold, they could play the hand out and end up winning with their trips, or they could win big by getting their full house or quads. These combinations of plays eventually lead to the fact that when the board pairs, the person who is holding that card that matches is going to win the pot more often than not.

So when you see the board pair, if you don’t have the matching card to make trips, you should run for cover because someone is going to have a monster. You should always fold unless you are feeling risky. There is, as always, the possibility to win the low hand, but in this, with the example above, you would have to get runner runner low cards. It would be a better idea to try to win your low hand if the board didn’t pair until the turn or the river. For example:

If the board reads 2/10/4/10 then you now only need one low card to make your low hand. Now you don’t have to wait on the dreaded suspense of getting runner runner low cards to make your hand, which can take it’s toll on your heart, especially since the pot is undoubtedly going to be pretty big at this point. If this is the case then you should definitely call his bet on the turn because now you add a big insurance that you may win the low hand, and he may in fact, not have the full house yet and you could win with your flush or your straight and take both of the hi/lo pots down.