Party Poker have done well to listen to the punters and provide a $25/$50 pot-limit Omaha table to its cash game portfolio.
The UK poker firm cut its teeth on Texas Hold’Em and has been staging high stakes limit matches for several years but was initially reluctant to branch out into providing a similar offering for Omaha.
But Party Poker saw sense by finally agreeing to the growing demand for high stakes no-limit and pot-limit Omaha (PLO). After all, in this continually evolving industry, a failure to adapt can be fatal for any gaming company.
Party must have seen little need for the introduction of Omaha as for so many years Hold’Em was clearly the Ace in the hole of the poker world. But over the last year poker companies, with the exception of Full Tilt and PokerStars, have seen a tail-off in customers. By catering for the Omaha player, Party have made a shrewd move in terms of diversification.
The universal appeal of poker has inevitably spawned offshoots such as Omaha, in which players are dealt four hole cards instead of two. Indeed Omaha is generally the game of choice of poker professionals and aficionados who thrive on the added permutations, possibilities and complexities offered.
Personally, I have enough trouble trying to work out the ins and, more appropriately, outs of Texas Hold’Em as it is without having my brains fried by the added complications of Omaha. But then again when I sit down at a poker table I tend to hear muffled laughter and smell the whiff of tartare sauce.
But most players are slightly more sophisticated than me and since introducing PLO PartyPoker have been putting more bums on seats than the first screening of Basic Instinct at my local multiplex.
In fact Party claim that the tables been filling up so quickly they have had to introduce a batch of new tables in order to cut down on NHS-style waiting lists.
“Demand meant we recently introduced a new $25/$50 pot-limit Omaha table,” said one PartyPoker suit. “But since then we have had to open up more tables for high stakes action. We used to have big limit games but this is the biggest game we have had at PartyPoker.com for a long time. The high stakes action has picked up.”
Party has also embellished its service by improving the player stats service, enabling users to specify which game they would like to examine in more detail, including Omaha and stud high-low games.
Competitors can try and crack their opponents by getting a detailed breakdown on statistics such as how often opponents check, bet, raise, call and fold – and also at what stage they fold. Which is all good news for the punter – so long as you don’t share the above information with your mates.
