I have just started playing some Omaha Hi/Lo sit-n-Go tournaments and have really enjoyed it (it doesn’t hurt that I have been having quite a bit of success). It’s a fun change from Hold’em, with the added complication of the lo hands (is he raising because he is a on a lo or a hi hand?).
Anybody else playing this game much?
What are the rules?
It’s played exactly like hold 'em with the following exceptions: players are dealt four hole cards instead of two; players must use exactly two of their hole cards and three of the community cards to make a hand; the best low hand with no card higher than an 8 takes half the pot; if there is no qualifying low hand the high hand takes the whole pot.
I love Omaha and Omaha hi-lo. I don’t play it as much as I’d like for some reason. I’ve mostly played it in multi-table tournaments. The first two tournaments I ever played, which were the first two times I’d ever played the game, I came in 4th both times. Probably woulda won the first one, was the massive chip leader with four players left, but took three horrendous beats in as many hands from the same guy drawing for a low and back-dooring a high hand.
To clarify, a “low hand” is 5 cards (exactly two from your hand, exactly three from the board) all of which have different ranks, and all of which are one of A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Suits are irrelevant.
Low hands are compared by their highest card. So 34567 is better than A2348.
Then the next highest card is a tiebreaker, so A2347 is better than A2357.
The absolute best possible low hand is A2345, known as “the wheel”. (Note that it is also a straight for the high hand.)
Note that, because all hands must use 3 cards from the board, if the board does not have 3 or more distinct cards 8-or-lower, then no low hand will be possible at all. If it does have at least 3, there may still be no low hand, depending on what cards players have in their hands.
Starting hands with A2 in them are premium in hi/lo, particularly if they have lots of other low cards to go along. A234 is ridiculous, as is AA23.
One tricky thing to keep in mind is “counterfeiting”. Normally, to figure out how good your low hand is, you look at the board, and hope you have the two lowest cards not already on the board. So if the board is 258, you want to have A3, which gives you the nut low (in this case, A2358), meaning worst case, you split the low half of the pot with someone else who has A3. But suppose a 3 comes on the turn or river. You still have A3, and you still have A2358. However, it’s no longer the nut low, as someone else who has A4, who previously had A2458 and was losing to you, now has A2345 for the stone cold nut low. Generally, you don’t want the cards you have in your hand to also show up on the board, because that means that, effectively, EVERYONE has those cards. That’s called being counterfeited.
I’ve played hi-low games before, but always in a dealer’s choice type game. Usually 7-card stud hi-low, but sometimes 5-card stud. When I play, though, any hand can qualify for low, and the last raiser declares first.
Whoops. I shouldn’t say that any hand qualifies for low. We always exclude straights and flushes. Aces are always high. Thus 7,5,4,3,2 of mixed suits is the lowest hand possible. That’s a little bit different from the low hand rankings Max has detailed.
We also occasionally play plain old lowball; high hands don’t count for squat. Tossing a low-hand into the rotation once in a while makes a good mix of games thru the night. And you can sometimes catch a guy forgetting how his hand really ranks against the rest of the table. Good game for stealing a pot now and then; good game for bluffing, too.
… I’m confused. Ace isn’t a high card? Also, doesn’t having a straight kind of mean you don’t have a low hand?
I always thought that a ‘low’ hand meant the hand with the least value, not the definition you gave.
When I’ve played hi/low with people, a hand with king high could be the winning “low” hand if everyone else had at least a pair, for example. Or heck, even a pair could be “low,” as long as all remaining hands are valued higher. I think. Actually, that would sort of screw betting when/if you’re just down to two people I suppose.
Oh, duh. UncleBeer reminded me how it works; you state whether or not you’re going for high or low before you show your hand.
Not in Omaha Hi/Lo. You can win both the lo and the high hand. You are basicaly making two separate hands. Your best Hi hand and your best lo hand. And A can be used for both. So if you As2s4h3c and the community cards 3s4s5sTcJc you can claim the high with the nut flush and the low with A2345 (although you may split that one).
I love Omaha hi-lo. In fact, I prefer it to Hold 'Em. It’s a very live game, you can easily win or lose a boat load of money in a very short time.
Well, there is a low game where any hand can potentially qualify as a low hand, Razz. It’s a form of 7-stud. Pairs are the devil.
To clarify further, there are two different kinds of “low” poker games. One is the one in which you’re trying to make the absolutely worst POKER hand. In that game, the winningest possible hand is 23457 not all of the same suit. This type of game is sometimes referred to as “deuce to seven”, in recognition of that hand. A game typically played with those rules is “triple-draw-low”, which is 5 card draw with three rounds of drawing and betting.
The other kind of low game, which is as far as I know exclusively played as the low half of high-low split, is totally unrelated to poker hand rankings, and simply involves the 5 lowest distinct cards, with ace being low. In games of this sort, suits are irrelevant, and A2345 is the nuts.
Two further things complicate this:
(1) Some hi/low games are “declare”, and some are “cards speak”. In “declare”, a person announces (usually via simultaneous reveal of 0, 1 or 2 chips) that they wish to win the high hand, or the low hand, or both. In “cards speak”, everyone just shows their cards, whoever has the best high hand wins high, whoever has the best low hand wins low. This is a crucial distinction. Suppose you have a hand with A2347 all the same suit. You have a very good high hand (ace high flush). You also have a very good low hand (A2347). But both of your hands might be beaten. If two other plays are both in the pot and betting like crazy, you might figure that you’re beat. But is your high beat? Or your low beat? Or both? In a declare game, you have to figure it out and guess right. In cards speak, you just have to hope that you aren’t facing both a full house and A3456.
(2) Some low games have a “qualify”, meaning that a hand has to be sufficiently good to even be allowed to be counted as a low. Generally, the qualify is 8-or-better. Thus, 45678 is a legal low hand, but A2349 is not. Omaha hi/lo is basically always played with the qualify, meaning that many times, no one has a low hand at all. Generally, cards speak games have qualify, declare games don’t. In a declare game, if you declare low and no one else does, you generally win half the pot, regardless of your cards.
A2345 is the nuts in Razz, and it’s played exactly like 7-stud. It is not part of a hi-lo split.
I’ve played a lot of Omaha hi-lo and Omaha high.
A couple of key things to remember about Omaha high lo: First of all, any hand that can’t sweep the pot is garbage. This is a game in which you must play very tight if you want to win money. There are very few playable hands that don’t have an A-2 in them, and preferably an A23 or A24.
Know when to not draw for a low - especially a non-nut low. An A2 with a 579 board is a very dangerous holding, especially if it seems likely that you are competing with another A2. Now you’re playing for 1/4 of the pot, with a flop that will likely generate some serious raising action, and you can easily be counterfeited if an A or 2 lands. Sometimes you have to just fold in these situations.
The only playable hands that are non-nut low hands are very big cards AAKK, AKKQ, that sort of thing. Hands which, if you hit them, aren’t likely to bring in a low so you can still sweep the pot. A hand like 6789 is complete garbage in Omaha hi-lo. If you make your straight, it brings in a low so you’re always playing a hand like that for half a pot.
Another mistake a lot of newbies make is to raise when they have a nut low without some backup. For example, if you have A2KQ, and the flop is 578. You have the nut low. Someone bets, and there is a raise in front of you. Re-raising is almost certainly not a good idea. If you’re playing against another A2, you run the risk of being counterfeited, and you’re losing money with every raise you put in even though you have the best low hand.
Finally, if you find that the game is fairly tight, don’t bother playing. Omaha hi-lo is a game of extremes - if the other players are weak, it can be a gold mine if you are patient. But if the players are reasonably tight and understand how to play the game, no one makes any money except for the rake.