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Six Pairs and a Dangler
A good way to judge your starting hands in Omaha is to think how many playable pairs your four hole cards afford you. If you are playing Texas Hold'em then your hole cards offer you one choice, that being the one pair of cards you have in front of you. In games of Omaha though your four hole cards offer you a much wider range of possible starting hands.

Look at it this way; your four hole cards can be made into six pairs. If you were dealt the Ks, Qs, 10d and 4c, then these cards can be made into the following pairs;
  • Ks Qs
  • Ks 10d
  • Ks 4c
  • Qs 10d
  • Qs 4c
  • 10d 4c
What you should be able to see is that you have three playable pairs and three which offer a very poor chance of making a strong hand. Ks Qs makes both the flush chance and a straight, while Ks 10d and Qs, 10d both give you a possible straight. However, all three pairs involving the 4c don't really offer any real hope of constructing a hand.

This highlights perfectly the dangers of playing a hand which contains a dangler. A dangler is a card in Omaha and Omaha Hi Lo which does not work with the other three cards in any way. As you can see by the example provided above, a dangler in your four hole cards reduces your six starting pairs down to just three. The presence of a dangler doesn't just weaken your hole cards by 25%, it actually decreases its effectiveness by 50%! You should never, ever forget this important statistic when you're looking at your starting hand in a game of Omaha.

Also be wary of playing those hands which offer only two real playable hands. Four hole cards such as J-10-5-4 is just the sort of hand that many inexperienced Omaha players will think is good enough with which to get involved in the action. However, unless any of the cards are of the same suit then all you actually have is two pairs - a J-10 with which to make a straight and a 5-4 for another shot at a very low and weak straight. Even if your cards do offer a chance of a flush it's going to be a flush of low rank which may well be beaten by somebody holding a suited Ace, King or Queen in their hand. If you make a straight with the 5-4 then it is unlikely that it will be the strongest possible straight.

There are those occasions when you are not going to be able to put down a hand with a high pair in it, such as A-A-10-6 but for the most part you should always try to get involved in the action with four cards which don't include a dangler and work together to give you six possible pairs with which to catch the flop.

If you do that then your chances of constructing a very strong hand are considerably improved and that will ultimately help to make you a much stronger and more successful Omaha player.