Poker Strategy - Introduction to Omaha

The Rules

In Omaha Hold'em 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; in a game of more than 3 people usually a straight or better wins.

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 Hold'em is not as popular as Texas Hold'em but it is played by plenty. Also, alot of good Texas 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 Texas Hold'em. These players generally play way loose.

Also, it 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 odds are that somebody has one. By "technical" I don't mean that Omaha is a more complex game. On the contrary, it is much simpler, because it is more a game of straightforward probabilities, whereas the psychological element in Texas Hold'em is much stronger.

Some good places to play low-limit Omaha are Party Poker or Empire Poker (they are on the same network). Another place to play is Big Dawg but they don't have as many Omaha players.

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