Introduction to Omaha
POKER STRATEGY

The Rules

In Omaha, each player recieves 4 hole cards and everyone shares 5 community cards, similar to Texas Hold'em. The catch is that you must use exactly 2 cards from your hand and 3 cards from the board to make your 5-card poker hand. In general the winning hands in Omaha are much better than the winning hands in Texas Hold'em.

When you are first playing Omaha, you should make sure you are actually using 2 cards from your hand, and not 3 or 1.

Please see the Omaha Rules Page for more information.

Why play Omaha?

Omaha is not as popular as Texas Hold'em but the games are there if you look for them. Many good Hold'em players want to try out Omaha and are unfamiliar with the game, but they may still play at high limits because they are good at Hold'em. These players generally play too loose after the flop. In hold'em, two pair is usually a very strong hand. In Omaha, it can often cost you a fortune. This is because you'll rarely get paid off big when holding two pair but will often wind up paying off someone else with a higher two pair, set, straight or flush.

Also, Omaha is much more of a technical game because it is easy to see what the best hand is, since usually there is a flush or a straight on board and often somebody has one. By "technical" I don't mean that Omaha is a more complex game. On the contrary, it can be simpler, because it is more a game of straightforward probabilities, whereas the psychological element in Texas Hold'em is much stronger. Bluffing is not as big of an element in Omaha especially in long-handed games where there are several players in each pot.

Some good places to play low-limit Omaha are Party Poker or Titan Poker.

Next Article: Low Limit Omaha Strategy