rules
Omaha, and the rule everyone gets wrong.
Omaha is Texas Hold'em with four cards in your hand instead of two. Same board, same betting rounds, same hand rankings. One rule is different, and it is the one that costs people money: you make your five card hand from exactly two of your own cards and exactly three from the board. Always. Even when it hurts.
two from your hand, three from the board
In Hold'em you use any five of the seven cards available, and the Hold'em rules let you use both of your cards, one, or neither. Omaha removes that freedom. Two of yours, three of the board, no other combination is a legal hand. Here is what that looks like when it matters.
the board
Four hearts out there, and you are holding the ace of hearts.
your hand
In Hold'em this is the nut flush: your ace of hearts plus the four hearts on the board. In Omaha it is nothing. You must use two cards from your hand, and your only heart is the ace, so the second card you bring cannot be a heart. Your best legal hand is , which is ace high. Not a flush, not even a pair.
what does have a flush
Two hearts in hand, so two of them go in and three board hearts complete it: . A king high flush, which beats the ace high nothing that felt like the best hand a moment ago. Swap the ten of diamonds in the first hand for a second heart, , and it is the nut flush after all. One card, and the difference between the best hand and no hand.
The same rule runs in the other direction, and there it catches people who think the board is playing for them. A board of gives every player in Hold'em a straight to the ace. In Omaha it gives nobody anything on its own, because playing it would mean using five board cards and you are allowed three. Holding you do have the straight, using your king and queen with the ace, jack and ten. Holding you have ace high and nothing else.
Everything else about how hands are compared is unchanged, so the standard ranking from royal flush down to high card applies here exactly as it does in Hold'em. The only question Omaha adds is which five cards you are permitted to build.
side by side
| Texas Hold'em | Omaha | |
|---|---|---|
| Cards in your hand | Two | Four |
| Cards you must use from your hand | Any number, including none | Exactly two, always |
| Cards you must use from the board | Any number | Exactly three, always |
| Five card hands you can make | 21 | 60 |
| Usual betting structure | No limit | Pot limit |
| Hand ranking | Standard | Standard, identical |
Those 60 five card hands are where the feel of the game comes from. Four cards contain six two card combinations, and each of those can be paired with any of the ten ways to take three cards from the board. You are not holding one hand, you are holding six, and so is everyone else.
pot limit
You can bet the pot, and not a chip more.
Omaha is usually played pot limit, which is why you will see it called PLO. The maximum bet is the current pot. The maximum raise is the pot as it would stand after you call, which trips up nearly everyone the first time: with 100 in the middle and a 100 bet in front of you, you first call the 100, making the pot 300, and then you may raise 300 on top. Your total is 400.
Before the flop the same sum gives a smaller number than people expect. In a 1 and 2 game, the first player to raise can make it 7, no more. Pots therefore grow in steps rather than in one move, and a hand that reaches the river has usually been priced several times along the way. The other rules of betting are unchanged, so the table stakes principle from the general rules still holds: you can only lose what is in front of you.
which four cards are worth playing
Four cards that work together
A good Omaha hand is one where all four cards belong to the same plan. Double suited connectors like J T 9 8 with two suits make straights and two different flushes. The same four ranks in four suits make far fewer hands.
Watch for the dangler
Three great cards and one unrelated card is really a three card hand. It still contains six two card combinations, but three of them are dead. That is the most common way a hand that looks strong plays weak.
Aces need help
A pair of aces is the best pair to hold, but a lot less dominant than in Hold'em, because your opponent has four cards to fight back with. Aces with a suited card and a connected card play far better than aces with two random low cards.
Draw to the nuts
With four cards each, someone usually has the top of the range. A king high flush draw is the kind of hand that wins a small pot and loses a large one. This is the single biggest difference in how the two games feel.
There is one more version worth knowing about. In Omaha hi lo, the pot is split between the best hand and the best low hand of eight or better, and the two card rule applies to each half separately, so you may use one pair of your cards for the high and a different pair for the low. If none of that sounds appealing yet, the numbers that carry over from Hold'em, outs and pot odds and the price of a call, are all on the poker cheat sheet.
next
The two card rule sticks once you have been caught by it.
The table deals Texas Hold'em rather than Omaha, so treat it as the place to drill the part both games share: position, the price of a call, and reading a board for what it can actually make. Forty hands in the browser, no account, no download, and a hand history you keep at the end.
omaha questions
What is Omaha poker?
A community card game with the same board and the same betting rounds as Texas Hold'em, but you get four private cards instead of two, and you must make your hand from exactly two of them plus exactly three of the five board cards. It is most often played pot limit, which is where the name PLO comes from.
Do you have to use two cards in Omaha?
Yes, exactly two, in every hand and without exception. Not one, not three, and never all five board cards. This applies even when it makes your hand worse: if using two of your cards is bad for you, that is still the hand you have.
What is the difference between Omaha and Texas Hold'em?
Two cards versus four, and the freedom to use any of them versus the requirement to use exactly two. The hand rankings are identical, the board is identical and the betting rounds are identical. What changes is that hands run much bigger, so the hand that wins a big pot in Omaha is usually near the top of what is possible.
How does pot limit betting work?
The largest bet you may make is the size of the pot. When raising, that size includes your own call first: if the pot is 100 and someone bets 100, you may call 100 to make it 300 and then raise 300, for 400 in total. Before the flop in a 1/2 game the first raise is capped at 7.
Can the board make my hand in Omaha?
No, and this is the same rule again from the other side. Four to a flush on the board does nothing for you unless you hold two cards of that suit. A board of ten through ace gives everyone a straight in Hold'em and nobody a straight in Omaha, because you would have to use five board cards and you are allowed three.
How many Omaha starting hands are there?
There are 270,725 different four card combinations from a 52 card deck. Each one contains six two card combinations, and against a five card board that makes 60 possible five card hands at showdown, compared with 21 in Hold'em.
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