Welcome to Donkey Bray. We're getting anxious, but the stable door is about to open. The first tournament we're entering is a championship bout, the championship Omaha Hi-Lo Split (8 or better) on June 6. Watch for postings starting around 7pm.
First, a few rules for those not familiar with Omaha. Omaha Hi-Lo is one of the more complicated games, so feel free to skip this and stay tuned for Texas Hold'em later. Also, my brief summary may seem long, but there are many books on this topic. Here goes:
Omaha is short for "Omaha Hold'em", a cousin to the currently common game of "Texas Hold'em", which is generally referred to as simply "Hold'em". The two games are identical in all but about five ways. Here are the differences:
1. Each player in Omaha receives four cards, not two.
2. The flop, turn and river are identical to Hold'em, creating a pool of five community cards on the board.
3. Half of the pot goes to the person with the best poker hand. To construct this hand, each player must use exactly two cards from their hand and three cards from the community board.
a. Accordingly, if a player has the Ace and King of diamonds (along with two rags) and the community board has four diamonds, the player has an Ace high flush. However, if the player has only the Ace of diamonds and no other diamonds, the player does not have a flush despite the fact that the community board has four diamonds. Remember that the player must use two cards from his hand and three from the board, so among those five cards the player will have something that's not a diamond.
b. This aspect of the game becomes very interesting when a player has, for example, a 6, 7, T, J and the flop includes an 8 and a 9. Consider all the turn and river cards that give this player a straight . . . any 5, 6, 7, T, J, or Q (e.g. if a 6 falls, the player uses the 6, 8, and 9 from the board with the 7 and T from their hand to create a Ten high straight). That's 20 cards, which means a straight will happen about 69.7% of the time! More importantly, in each case the player has the highest possible straight available. This is a side note about Omaha, but very important. The biggest losses I see in Omaha occur when people have second nut hands. For example, if the board has an 89J and I have the 7T, I have a straight, but someone out there, with each player holding four cards, is likely to have the TQ to make a higher straight. I see this a lot in Omaha. King high flushes getting donkey punched. Not pretty. Back to the rules.
4. The other half of the pot goes to the person with the "lowest" poker hand. This one is a little tricky.
a. In order to have a low poker hand, you must have five cards, again using two from your hand and three from the community cards, between Ace and 8 (no pairs allowed). The best low hand is A2345 (flushes and straights are irrelevant) and the worst is 45678.
b. In comparison, whichever player has the highest card loses. So, for example, if I have a 24578 and you have an A2678, I win. Our 8s cancel out; our 7s cancel out; and you have the next highest card with your 6. Although you're A2 is fantastic, that 6 kills you.
c. In many hands no one has a low hand either because they have high cards in their hands, their low cards all paired up, or, most commonly, the community board doesn't have 3 low cards in it. Remember, because you have to use 3 cards from the community board, if the community board doesn't have 3 cards A-8 (not including pairs), then NO ONE CAN HAVE A LOW. This is very important as many players will sit in calling bets with their A234 when the board is something like 577J hoping that the river card will bring them a low.
d. If there is no low hand, then the high hand takes the entire pot. This is, of course, hugely important and often leads to pre-flop raises from high-focused hands (e.g. JQKK).
5. Omaha is often played as a "high only" game. In that version, it's often played pot limit. However, we're playing Hi-Lo, so we will be playing a limit game. The betting increments, of course, will go up every hour.
See you June 6 - Get your hooves warmed up!
Eric Kurtzman
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