When you play poker you have to have your mojo fully engaged, and a few months ago mine had upped and left the building. It would seem that 12 years of hold’em was plenty and I needed a new challenge. Pot-limit Omaha was the answer, as it is for an increasing number of players. The brutal fact is hold’em games, particularly cash games, have become far tougher in the last two or three years. The general standard of play has increased a lot, the games are tighter, more aggressive and there are far fewer casual players.

In Omaha the level of awareness is far lower, there is much less educational information and the game is not as close to being ‘solved’ as hold’em.