by Pete Adams

Created on: January 05, 2007   Last Updated: May 03, 2007

If you fancy a break from Texas Hold 'Em, why not try your hand at a different form of poker?

The rules of Omaha are almost identical to those of Hold 'Em. There are, however, two essential differences. Firstly, players are dealt four hold cards rather than two. Secondly, and this can be a little confusing at first for players that have cut their teeth on Hold 'Em, a player's final hand must comprise two hold cards and three board cards. As far as rules go, that's it, if you know the rules of Hold 'Em, you now know the rules of Omaha Hi.

There is another form of the game - Omaha Hi-Lo, my favourite of all forms of poker, in which qualifying low hands take half of the pot. This works in exactly the same way as in Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo with which you may be familiar. I'll talk about Omaha Hi here as it's the best place to start. Both forms of the game come in limit, pot limit and no limit varieties. I recommend starting with limit before considering a move to the more popular pot limit game.

The first thing you need to appreciate about Omaha is that pots tend to be won by far bigger hands than Hold 'Em. It is very rare to see a single pair win a hand. For that matter, you will not see too many hands won with two pairs. The key to success at Omaha is to realise that there will usually be a big hand out there somewhere. If there are three suited cards on the board, there is a good chance that someone has a flush. If there are three connectors out there, chances are that someone has a straight. If there is a pair on board, there's a real chance that someone has a full house or quads. Always look for the nuts, low straights and low flushes lose with great regularity. If you don't catch anything on a flop that looks like it could be a good flop for another player, don't carry on betting.

Let's suppose that we are holding 10s 10c 8d 7d and the flop has landed Kd Qd Jh. How many outs do we have? An optimist might say that we have nine diamonds, two tens and four nines giving a total of fifteen. A pessimist would exclude the diamonds on the grounds that little good will ever come of chasing a beatable flush draw. He would similarly ignore the nines as the queen high straight looks beaten before it's made. He would conclude that there were only two outs and even then, a ten on the turn would provide one out to make quads and nine outs to make a beatable full house. The pessimist is the one that has it right. If we are heads up or short-handed we might start to factor some

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