Omaha Rules

Another community card variant, Omaha displays a radically different nature from that of Texas Holdem. While in Holdem rookies stand a fairly good chance against experienced opposition (on account of the luck factor and the schooling), in Omaha they don’t. Also known as the game of nuts, Omaha Hi/Lo for instance, radically diminishes the influence of the luck factor, and rather than helping them, schooling ends up working against the fish.

Omaha Hi plays just like Holdem, with a few differences in rules. The hand begins with the posting of the blinds. The blinds are forced bets that two players have to make in every hand. The Small Blind (SB) is on the immediate left of the dealer button, and the Big Blind (BB) is on the immediate left of the SB. The SB is a bet which is usually half the minimum bet and the BB is the equivalent of a minimum bet. As the dealer button travels around the table in a clock-wise direction, so do the blinds, being ‘pushed’ along in front of it. In this regard, Omaha (whether it’s the High or the Hi/Lo version) is a positional game, just like Texas Holdem.

In online poker, the blinds can be set to ‘auto post’ in which case the player will not have to actually post a blind, or they can be left on manual, in which case the table is probably going to end up hating your guts. Whenever you join an Omaha table, the software will ask you whether you just want to take a seat and wait for the BB to come around to you, or whether you want to post a BB right away and join the action on the spot.

After the blinds are posted, the dealer gives each of the players four hole-cards. Because players will gain an insight into a much bigger percentage of their eventual showdown hands, skilled Omaha players will gain an almost instant advantage on rookies. The preflop betting round follows, in which the players will be presented with options to bet, call, raise or fold. In an online poker room, the advanced action options allow for a choice to be ticked before the action comes around, and to be executed automatically when it eventually does. Although this may come in handy when multi-tabling, by using the advanced action radio-buttons, you’ll probably make it easier for your opponents to read you.

The preflop betting round is followed by the flop. The dealer burns a card and then deals three community cards onto the table, face-up. Players will make their five-card hands with exactly 2 cards from their pockets and exactly 3 off the table.

The flop is followed by another betting round, then comes a lone community card called the turn, then another round of betting, followed by the last community card, the river. At this stage, there are 5 community cards on the table, but again: you are only allowed to make your hand(s) using exactly 2 cards from your pocket and exactly 3 off the table. You can’t use just 1 card off the table or 4 or 2. This is very important because this is the main reason why rookies used to playing Texas Holdem fail to assess their hands correctly.

The last betting round is followed by the showdown. The highest 5 card poker hand takes the pot, the online poker software rakes it – this is exactly why you should never play without rakeback – and awards it to the winner.

In Omaha Hi/Lo, the situation gets a bit more complicated. The highest and the lowest hands both win at showdown, splitting the pot 50-50. In order to qualify, a low hand must not contain any card higher than an 8. If it does, it does not qualify as low. In case there are no qualifying low hands, the high hand takes the entire pot.

It is possible for a player to have both the high and the low hands. In this case, he takes the entire pot in a move called ‘scooping’. In live Omaha, some casinos require that if the same player takes the entire pot, a ‘kill’ be left in the pot.

Whenever the same player holds both the high and the low hands, he can make his high with the very same cards as the low (take A,2,3,4,5 for example, which is the nut low and a solid high too), or with different cards, which is most often the case.