The Ultimate Guide to Omaha Poker
In Omaha Hi-Lo poker games, players must use 3 cards from the board – the Flop, Turn, and River – to form a poker hand. For this reason, if you have Ace-3-4-X, the 2 will slot neatly in between the Ace and the 3. If your unknown card – X - is a 4, then, your low would be beaten. Omaha Introduction. This poker calculator will give you the odds of a win, loss, and tie for each player in Omaha or Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or better. Click on any card and it will be used in the position indicated by the yellow frame. You may click on any valid card to move the frame there. Omaha is a variant of poker that plays very fast. With four cards in your hand you will often find reason to stay in a hand and keep the action going. With so many variations of Omaha Poker, it is a game that can take years to really get a good grasp on. For a beginning. See More Online Poker Sites; How to Play Omaha Poker in 20 Easy Steps 1. Two Differences between Hold'em and Omaha. Every player gets four cards in Omaha (instead of two in Hold'em) You MUST use two of them to make your best poker hand; 2. How to Win a Hand. Omaha is a community-card game played with two to ten players on one table.
Omaha has been described as the poker game of the future. This has already happened among the high stakes community where many of the biggest pots are now seen in Pot Limit Omaha games rather than No Limit Hold'em. Part of the reason for this the close similarities between the two games, and the fact Omaha provides more swings giving those with a lower skill edge at least a reasonable shot in any one session. Many players just enjoy a game where there is limited information openly available and people are still figuring out..
In this guide to Omaha you are first taken through how to play the game. After this you can find reasons for making the switch to Omaha and the different types of game you can find.
Omaha Poker Guide - How to Play Omaha
If you are familiar with Texas Hold'em then you will be able to pick up Omaha in no time. The game works in exactly the same way, with the hole cards dealt out followed by the flop, turn and river. The only differences are that all players receive 4 hole cards and in order to form a hand you have to use 2 cards from your hand and 3 from the board.
The betting format used is generally Pot Limit. You can find Limit and No-Limit betting games around, although the Pot Limit format suits the game better, allowing for plenty of post flop action while still being able to price opponents out of draws.
Pot Limit Omaha, or PLO, is usually only found on full ring tables in live rooms and in tournaments. Online the 6 max and heads-up games dominate. This is partly due to the fact that full ring games generally become an exercise in playing the nuts, where as short-handed games experience more play and excitement. The collapse of the full ring games online can also be credited in part to Rolf Slothboom, whose 2006 book 'Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha' describe a way to exploit the game by buying in for the minimum and essentially short-stacking, which was widely copied.
Omaha Poker Guide - Why Learn Omaha?
So if you are a winning Hold'em player, or at least happy enough playing that game why bother learning Omaha? Well for a start it is more fun. Fact. If you do not believe me just look at a starting hand in a regular PLO game - 4 hole cards give you six times more combinations than a 2 card Hold'em hand. If you like playing hands (and who doesn't) Omaha can really get you in the action.
This vast number of combinations, added to the possibilities on different boards means that Omaha is a much more complicated game than Hold'em. While this may sound daunting to some this has two advantages. For those who enjoy learning poker theory there is always new discoveries and fewer 'standard' spots that you will find in a typical NLHE analysis. Meanwhile no-one is close to 'solving' this game, meaning you can explore a variety of styles and plays, and many top players are known to adopt different tactics.
Finally you will learn to use different concepts for Omaha that can be applied to other poker formats. For example Omaha is a lot more of a drawing game than Hold'em, meaning your board reading skills will improve along with your post-flop play. Another key area where Omaha can help you is your outlook on variance. PLO especially is a game full of wild swings, where you can flop the nuts and still be an underdog, so it can definitely help your mental tolerance of bad beats.
Omaha Poker Guide - Different Types of Omaha
There are several different variations of the game apart from PLO. Until the advent of online poker PLO was mainly a European game and the most common Omaha version played in the US was Limit Omaha Hi-Lo. Here the pot is often split into two between the usual high hands and qualifying lows.
Like high only Omaha you must use 2 cards from your hand and 3 from the board, although you can use different cards to create the high and the low hands. In order to qualify for a low you must have 5 cards of different values which are lower than an 8, with straights and flushes ignored and aces counting as both high and low. So your best low hand is A2345, also known as the wheel. When there is no qualifying low the high hand wins the entire pot.
Omaha games, both high only and split pot can now be found with 5 and even 6 hole cards. These play in exactly the same way as the 4 card games only with more possible combinations. As most hands can justify some potential, particularly to those not used to Omaha games, you will tend to find these games are loose pre-flop and nitty postflop.
A popular French variant of Omaha, Courchevel is now spread on some online sites and in card rooms outside the country. Here each player gets 5 hole cards and the first board card is dealt before the preflop betting commences. It can be played high only or as a hi/lo split game.
Learning Omaha is a great way of getting away from the monotony of No Limit and keeping poker fresh. Even if you do not feel you need this being a good poker player means adapting to the best games available and Omaha games frequently have some of the largest pots and fishest players around.
More Articles Covering Different Online Poker Games:
When you're playing hole card games such as Omaha, choosing the right hands to play preflop can make a big difference -in fact, it can make all the difference.
If you play absolutely every hand, you're just going to funnel your winnings right back into the game. However, in Omaha especially, you want to play enough hands to scoop some big pots. Those of you crossing over from Texas Hold'em will find yourself playing a lot more hands. Omaha Hold'em is definitely more of an action based game than its sister game Texas Hold'em.
When a game of Omaha begins you'll be dealt 4 cards, and from those 4 cards you can come up with 6 starting hand combinations. Omaha rules require you to use exactly 2 of your hole cards and 3 of the community cards (the ones dealt face up on the felt table and shared amongst all the players).
So you get two more cards than you're used to, and so do all of the other players. In fact, there are in general a lot more cards out there to play with.
That variance makes playing Omaha poker, creating winning Omaha strategies, and choosing strong Omaha starting hands a little trickier. Although you get 4 cards to choose from, keep in mind that so do all the other players at the table, so there are more cards dealt out altogether.
Suited Cards - Remember, You Only Get to Keep Two...
Finding yourself looking down at four cards of the same suit is not a good thing when you're playing Omaha. If you're holding four spades what you really have is two spades to a flush, and two of your own outs mucked.
Pocket Pairs
Pocket pairs in Omaha are a good hand, but not nearly as valuable as in Texas Hold'em. The look on a new players face when he first sees a solid boat get beat by another boat… it's priceless. It's not uncommon to see three sets of trips at showdown, or a couple boats, a flush, and top two pair.
What I'm saying here is that with all these cards and so many more players paying for a flop, you're going to need a lot better of a hand to win a pot.
Omaha Poker Strategy Guide
The Best Possible Starting Hand in Omaha High:
So if you are a winning Hold'em player, or at least happy enough playing that game why bother learning Omaha? Well for a start it is more fun. Fact. If you do not believe me just look at a starting hand in a regular PLO game - 4 hole cards give you six times more combinations than a 2 card Hold'em hand. If you like playing hands (and who doesn't) Omaha can really get you in the action.
This vast number of combinations, added to the possibilities on different boards means that Omaha is a much more complicated game than Hold'em. While this may sound daunting to some this has two advantages. For those who enjoy learning poker theory there is always new discoveries and fewer 'standard' spots that you will find in a typical NLHE analysis. Meanwhile no-one is close to 'solving' this game, meaning you can explore a variety of styles and plays, and many top players are known to adopt different tactics.
Finally you will learn to use different concepts for Omaha that can be applied to other poker formats. For example Omaha is a lot more of a drawing game than Hold'em, meaning your board reading skills will improve along with your post-flop play. Another key area where Omaha can help you is your outlook on variance. PLO especially is a game full of wild swings, where you can flop the nuts and still be an underdog, so it can definitely help your mental tolerance of bad beats.
Omaha Poker Guide - Different Types of Omaha
There are several different variations of the game apart from PLO. Until the advent of online poker PLO was mainly a European game and the most common Omaha version played in the US was Limit Omaha Hi-Lo. Here the pot is often split into two between the usual high hands and qualifying lows.
Like high only Omaha you must use 2 cards from your hand and 3 from the board, although you can use different cards to create the high and the low hands. In order to qualify for a low you must have 5 cards of different values which are lower than an 8, with straights and flushes ignored and aces counting as both high and low. So your best low hand is A2345, also known as the wheel. When there is no qualifying low the high hand wins the entire pot.
Omaha games, both high only and split pot can now be found with 5 and even 6 hole cards. These play in exactly the same way as the 4 card games only with more possible combinations. As most hands can justify some potential, particularly to those not used to Omaha games, you will tend to find these games are loose pre-flop and nitty postflop.
A popular French variant of Omaha, Courchevel is now spread on some online sites and in card rooms outside the country. Here each player gets 5 hole cards and the first board card is dealt before the preflop betting commences. It can be played high only or as a hi/lo split game.
Learning Omaha is a great way of getting away from the monotony of No Limit and keeping poker fresh. Even if you do not feel you need this being a good poker player means adapting to the best games available and Omaha games frequently have some of the largest pots and fishest players around.
More Articles Covering Different Online Poker Games:
When you're playing hole card games such as Omaha, choosing the right hands to play preflop can make a big difference -in fact, it can make all the difference.
If you play absolutely every hand, you're just going to funnel your winnings right back into the game. However, in Omaha especially, you want to play enough hands to scoop some big pots. Those of you crossing over from Texas Hold'em will find yourself playing a lot more hands. Omaha Hold'em is definitely more of an action based game than its sister game Texas Hold'em.
When a game of Omaha begins you'll be dealt 4 cards, and from those 4 cards you can come up with 6 starting hand combinations. Omaha rules require you to use exactly 2 of your hole cards and 3 of the community cards (the ones dealt face up on the felt table and shared amongst all the players).
So you get two more cards than you're used to, and so do all of the other players. In fact, there are in general a lot more cards out there to play with.
That variance makes playing Omaha poker, creating winning Omaha strategies, and choosing strong Omaha starting hands a little trickier. Although you get 4 cards to choose from, keep in mind that so do all the other players at the table, so there are more cards dealt out altogether.
Suited Cards - Remember, You Only Get to Keep Two...
Finding yourself looking down at four cards of the same suit is not a good thing when you're playing Omaha. If you're holding four spades what you really have is two spades to a flush, and two of your own outs mucked.
Pocket Pairs
Pocket pairs in Omaha are a good hand, but not nearly as valuable as in Texas Hold'em. The look on a new players face when he first sees a solid boat get beat by another boat… it's priceless. It's not uncommon to see three sets of trips at showdown, or a couple boats, a flush, and top two pair.
What I'm saying here is that with all these cards and so many more players paying for a flop, you're going to need a lot better of a hand to win a pot.
Omaha Poker Strategy Guide
The Best Possible Starting Hand in Omaha High:
When playing straight Omaha, or Omaha High, the best hand you can hope to peel up from the table is AAKK. That's it, the very best hand preflop. Now you want these to be suited as well to give you the best odds post flop. So Something like Ah As Kh Ks would be perfect.
How To Omaha Poker
Now you've got two shots at flopping trips, two cracks at a flush draw, and a high straight possibility. You are holding your out cards for a full house if you make trips, but in the Omaha high world, this is as good as a starting hand gets. And if all else fails there, you've still got that pair of aces workin' for ya.
Second up on the list of Highest ranking Omaha High Starting hands is AAQQ, still giving you a nice pair of bullets to start off the show. In addition here you have AQ for pulling off Broadway straights. And of course we want the hand to be double suited such as Ah As Qh and Qs, giving you two shots at making a flush.
Omaha Hi Hand Ranking Chart:
**Please assume that these hands are all Double Suited**
Rank | Hand |
#1 | AAKK |
#2 | AAQQ |
#3 | AAJJ |
#4 | AATT |
#5 | AAKQ |
#6 | AAQJ |
#7 | AAAT |
#8 | AKJ10 |
#9 | AKQJ |
#10 | AKQT |
The Best Starting Hands for Omaha Hi/Lo...
The most popular versions of Omaha today are the Hi/Lo varieties which award a pot to both the highest hand and to the lowest hand. Omaha Hi-Lo is super fun to play because the action is insanely intense.
You already have a full table seeing more flops, but now you have the lowest hand betting against the highest hand, and both actually standing to win. However, if you play your cards right, you'll be playing hands that will give you a shot at scooping up both the low pot and the Omaha high pot all in one clean swoop.
Omaha Hi/Lo players are eligible to win either the entire pot or a 50/50 split. The pot is of course split when there is a winning 'low' hand. A winning low hand must include five cards all under 8 (hence the Omaha 8 nickname) and different in value; a hand with a pair doesn't count, because it's no longer a low qualifying hand.
So with that in mind, the best possible hand to win the low is A2345.
Due to the fact that a player MUST use two cards from their hand and three from the board, a low hand is only a possibility if there are three or more cards on the table that are an 8 or lower. Learn more about Omaha Hi/Lo.
The Best Starting Hand in Omaha Hi-Lo Hands Down!
The best hand a dealer can put in front of you in an Omaha Hi Low game is AA23, especially if the ace and the deuce are suited, and the other ace and 3 are also suited.
This hand, dealt exactly this way (double suited), gives you the best shot at hitting flushes, straights, and the best low, not to mention it begins with a pair of aces you can use to build a high hand.
Considered to be the second best starting hand in Omaha Hi/Lo is AAK2, giving you a pair of aces and AK to work your way into a decent high hand, and A2 to work toward the low.