It shouldn't surprise anyone, what with the extreme saturation Texas Hold'em
gets on television, that relatively few people are familiar with Omaha Poker.
When people learn a bit about the game and see that there is a flop, a turn, and
a river, all like in Texas Hold'em, they think that Omaha is just a variation of
Hold'em. Finally, many are lured to Omaha because of the four hole cards,
thinking that it will be easy to make hands.
The truth is that Omaha is much different than Hold'em in its play and in its strategy.
There are two variations of Omaha poker: High only and High-Low. Here we will speak more generally so we will be talking about High only.
Most Omaha games are limit bet games. You can get into relatively low limit games, which is always a good idea until you feel ready to challenge the bigger bettors. The bigger bettors go for either higher limits or pot limit games. Pot limit means that the highest permitted bid is the size of the pot at that time. Newer Omaha players are well advised to steer clear of pot limit games for a very long time!
Each player is dealt four hole cards. After the first round of betting there is a three-card flop, another betting round, a one-card turn, betting, and, finally, a one-card river followed by the last round of betting.
Each player thus has 9 cards to use to make his best hand but: players must use two, and only two, hole cards and three, and only three, community cards to make his hand. If you're dealt four aces you actually have only a pair of aces that you will not be able to improve on.
Many players go astray as they see their hole cards or they see the community cards and envision hands that are not allowed under the basic rules.
The "button" goes around after each hand. This is the "dealer" for purposes of the blinds. |