I played many times in Omaha table and I have written this article dedicated to the memory of the thousands of winning hands that we have held on fourth street that were no longer winning hands on fifth street and to the memory of the many dollars that went with them. If you want to maintain good professional poise at the Omaha table, you must learn to treat the cruelest of last card losses like water off the back of a duck. Developing a flexible sense of humor might help. In any case, when you play Omaha, these unlucky losses will occur frequently. Perhaps the healthiest attitude is that you should expect to get screwed at least several times a session. But, if you are playing the game correctly, you should win just about as much money on last card draws as you lose. This is including the fact that a lot of fish are fishing along and winning hands that they should not even be in (which fact of course constantly boosts your winning hand amounts).
Fishing along
Remember, in Omaha there are a lot of hands where it is quite correct to fish along, simply calling, until the last card. Players who play too tight are not optimizing their winning possibilities. The real skill is to be able to know the difference between investing on good odds and fishing along on bad odds. Sometimes it is correct to call the fourth card (especially in betting structures where the fourth card is cheaper than the last card) and drop if you do not hit. If the value is there, put up your money and take your chances. In the long run you should come out ahead — if you are figuring things right.
Regarding last card losses, there is one lesson which can be learned from backgammon. The last card blues hurt most in super big pots when you have a lot of your own money invested. Whereas it is always nice to win the big pots, usually luck is in control, not you. Analogous to this is the backgammon situation where you are playing head-to-head with a weak player. If the fish happens to get lucky in a thirty-two or sixty-four game (in backgammon the doubling cube doubles the original stakes each time it is turned), it takes a lot of skillful smaller stake games to make up for it. Thus,it is practical to avoid huge swing situations where luck is a big factor.
Because of the big last card luck factor in Omaha, the better players would : be well advised to keep most “big” pots about the same size, except when they have a lock or are a huge favorite.
Thus, when the pot gets to a normal good size, the better players should ease up on the pot building if they are on thin percentages. This is one argument against making too many extra raises which are not likely to drop anyone. Otherwise put, if most of the pots are roughly the same size, the good players are less likely to lose the big one — and the last card blues will hurt less.