Omaha Hi Lo ? What Really It Is

Posted by Siva on September 23rd, 2010

The game Omaha Hi Lo is also known as Omaha holdem or sometimes "Omaha eight-or-better" or "Omaha/8". is the part of Omaha poker, the other part is Omaha high only. The name Omaha holdem is due to the reason that it is like a modified and more complicated version of Texas Holdem. You can win the whole pot if there are no best low hands, if you have high hands. On the contrary, if you have your competitor having best low hands, then you both have to share the pot. The whole things are same like dealer, small blind big blind but still Omaha Hi Lo has some significant differences which make it a different type of card game at last.

Each player constructs a high hand of five cards and another five-card which is actually from ace-to-five. There is a condition that a player should have ability to play lower than 8/7/6/5/4 pattern. However some casinos keep 9 or lower as the limit too but that?s rare in practice. Players are able to make high hand by playing his four cards called hole cards and he can make low hand by using two hole cards while playing. If there comes the situation that there is no low hand then the high hand wins the pot. This thing is something which creates the situation more difficult but the same complications are faced by other players too. Omaha Hi Lo is all about the formation of a High and a Low hand using two cards in each case from the four cards in hands of the players.

The other difference between Omaha and Texas Holdem is the fact that in Omaha Hi Lo not only the best possible 5-card poker hand wins. As a matter of fact securing a best possible high-card combo will only take you half the way, that is, half the pot, because the other half will go to the person showing down the Lowest hand. When there are 4-5 low cards on the board, getting the low hands becomes extremely difficult.

Early raises are normally risky with Omaha Hi Lo game. If you are very sure that you will win, only then you should rise early otherwise, you might be defeated or suppressed by the other person with better high or low hands. It is important to concentrate on flops with uniform numbers that can give better hands.

Bluffing is an important art in Omaha Hi Lo. Closely watching on the opponents are very important to catch them while bluffing however the player himself must be so confident that he must be able to hide his bluffs easily without any chance of being caught.

The cards one will want to avoid in Omaha Hi Lo are mid-ranked cards (cards close to 8). This is because they won?t make a good high hand; neither will they make a good low hand. Rather, in Omaha Hi Lo, to win, one must be having the cards combination such that they must be either too high or too low so that it would be easier to make the hands.

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Siva

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Siva
Joined: September 23rd, 2010
Articles Posted: 10

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