The purpose of the poker game is to form the best possible combination of 5 cards (unlike Texas Hold’em, in the Omaha game style you get 4 cards and you have at your disposal the shared community cards on the table)
The Blinds
The 2 blinds (the big blind and small blind) are forced bets aiming at ensuring a minimum pot (the blind’s value can vary from one table to another, from 0,1$ – the small blind, up to tens of dollars)
The Betting rounds
After paying the blinds, the cards are dealt two for each player, followed by the first round of betting – pre-flop. The first player to act is the one on the right of the blinds. Each player has at his reach a series of actions which he can perform: “check”, “bet”, “raise”, “re-raise”, “fold”. After concluding the first round of betting, on the table are layed the first three shared cards – the flop.
A new betting round begins. After each player acts, the turn follows; a forth card is layed on the table and a new betting round begins. Finally a fifth river card is placed on the table and the last round of betting begins.
The Showdown
The Showdown is the final step in wich players show their cards in order to reveal the winner of the pot.
The winner is the one who forms the best possible five cards combination using two of his cards, and three from the community cards formed out of the flop, turn, river. In fact this is the only difference between Omaha and Texas Hold’em.
In this round only the remaining players can confrunt their cards (one round can end at any time if all players, except one, quit the game; the winner can either show his cards to the other competitors or hide them). If two or more players pull off the same combination of cards, the pot is evenly divided between all winners.
Omaha Hi/Lo Poker Rules
Omaha Hi/Lo is a variant of the Omaha Poker game; its particularity is that it follows the formation of the highest and the lowest poker hand (it is possible for one player to pull off both the highest and the lowest hand), using two of the personal cards and three from the shared community cards. The lowest hand can’t always be formed (the lowest card in the combination must be eight), case in which the player pulls off the highest combination wins the whole pot. The betting rounds are the same as in Omaha.
In showdown the pot is split between the highest and the lowest poker hands.
