Omaha

What you need & setup

1. Give each player an equal chip stack (for example, 100 chips). Chips are the turn mechanic, not money.
2. Learn hold'em first if you have not — Omaha reuses its entire structure of blinds, button, and community cards.
3. Place the dealer button; the two players to its left post the small blind (1 chip) and big blind (2 chips).
4. Shuffle a standard 52-card deck.
5. Deal each player four cards face down.
6. Agree the stakes structure before playing — Omaha is most commonly played pot-limit.

Turn sequence

1. Pre-flop: starting left of the big blind, each player calls, raises, or folds.
2. The flop: three community cards are dealt face up, followed by a chip round (check, call, raise, or fold).
3. The turn: a fourth community card is dealt, followed by another chip round.
4. The river: the fifth community card is dealt, followed by the final chip round.
5. Showdown: remaining players reveal all four hole cards; each hand is read as exactly two hole cards plus exactly three board cards.
6. The best five-card hand wins the pot; the button then moves left and the next hand begins.

The Goal

Omaha plays exactly like Texas Hold'em on the surface — blinds, four chip rounds, five community cards — but every player holds four hole cards instead of two.

The catch that defines the game: your final hand must use exactly two of your hole cards and exactly three community cards. Not one, not three — exactly two.

The Exactly-Two Rule

This rule trips up every hold'em player at first. If the board shows four hearts and you hold one heart, you do NOT have a flush — you would need two hearts in your hand.

Example: you hold A♥ K♠ Q♦ J♣ and the board is 10♥ 9♥ 5♥ 3♥ 2♠. In hold'em your A♥ would make the nut flush; in Omaha you have no flush at all, just ace-high with a straight draw that missed.

Likewise, a board of four-of-a-kind does not give everyone quads; you can only use three of those board cards, and you must add exactly two from your hand.

Hand Rankings

Rankings are standard poker, strongest first: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card.

Because everyone effectively holds six two-card combinations (the ways to choose 2 from 4 cards), strong hands appear far more often than in hold'em. Winning showdowns are routinely straights, flushes, and full houses.

A hand that would be a monster in hold'em — like a bare overpair — is often a fold in Omaha. Recalibrating hand values is the core of learning the game.

Chip Rounds and Pot-Limit

Chip options are the poker standard: check, call, raise, or fold, across four rounds (pre-flop, flop, turn, river).

Omaha is traditionally played pot-limit: the largest allowed raise equals the current pot size. This keeps early pots restrained while letting later streets grow dramatically.

To size a maximum 'pot' raise: count the pot, add all pending calls, then add the call you would make — that total is your maximum raise on top of calling. Dealers usually help with the arithmetic.

Showdown and Reading Hands

At showdown, players reveal all four hole cards, and the dealer finds each player's best exactly-two-plus-exactly-three combination. Take your time — misreading Omaha hands is common even among experienced players.

Identical best hands split the pot. Because so many combinations exist, split pots (especially with shared straights) are noticeably more common than in hold'em.

If everyone folds to one player at any point, that player wins the pot unshown, as in all poker.

Ending a Session

Play cash-style to a time limit and compare final stacks, or tournament-style with escalating blinds until one player holds all the chips.

Expect bigger stack swings than hold'em — more players hit strong hands, so more big pots get contested. Set starting stacks a bit deeper (150–200 chips) to absorb the variance.

Scoring & how the game ends

• Chips are points only. Each pot goes to the winning hand (or is split between exact ties).
• Pot-limit structure means pots start small and can double repeatedly on later streets — most of a session's movement happens in a few large pots.
• For sessions, compare final stacks to the agreed starting stack; for tournaments, rank by elimination order.
• In hi-lo variants, the pot is split between the best high hand and the best qualifying low hand — track both halves separately.

Winning: Win each hand by making the best five-card hand from exactly two hole cards and exactly three community cards, or by being the last player who has not folded.

Common variations

These are genuine regional and house-rule differences — none of them is “the one true way” to play. Agree with your table before starting.

• Pot-limit Omaha (PLO)

  The dominant form: the maximum raise equals the current pot size. Keeps pre-flop restrained while later streets can escalate quickly.

  Common: The standard almost everywhere Omaha is played

• Omaha hi-lo eight or better (Omaha/8)

  The pot splits between the best high hand and the best qualifying low hand (five cards 8 or lower, using the exactly-two rule for each half separately).

  Common: A fixture of mixed-game rotations, often fixed-limit

• Five-card Omaha (Big O family)

  Players receive five (sometimes six) hole cards but still use exactly two. More combinations, even bigger hands.

  Common: Growing online and in southern US home games

• Fixed-limit Omaha

  Structured stakes with capped raises per round, taming the pot growth of the pot-limit game.

  Common: Mostly seen in hi-lo mixed games

• Courchevel

  A five-card Omaha variant where the first flop card is exposed before the pre-flop chip round, changing early decisions.

  Common: A niche European and online variant

A little history

Omaha's exact origin is unclear; it is generally described as evolving from earlier multi-hole-card hold'em variants, and by most accounts it entered Las Vegas card rooms in the early 1980s.