Poker

Two cards, always two cards… Omaha hands consist of three of the five community board cards, plus two cards from each player’s hand — always three off the board, always two out of the hand. You can use the same or different card combinations to make your high hand and your low hand (if any), but you always use two from your hand, three from the board. This is important not just from the perspective that it is a rule and you have to do it, but also in thinking about how your hand must integrate with the board. Your hand must cooperate with the board. (Cooperation is a recurrent Omaha principle.) You should never think of your hand in isolation. It needs three cards from the board for high, and needs three cards for low. (Some new players find it helpful to focus more on “three from the board” rather than “two from the hand.”)

Nut low means best possible low… Reading low hands often confuses newbie players — experienced ones too — but there actually is a pretty easy way to do it. First, you must remember the two cards from your hand, three from the board rule. A board like 87532 might make 2367 somewhat hard to read but you read your low hand simply by taking the lowest card combination to be found using three cards from the board and two from your hand.

But what is the lowest? What about when your cards are paired (counterfeited) on the board? Think of it this way: the lowest/best possible hand is a wheel, a 54321 — or 54,321. The highest/worst possible qualifying low hand is 87654 — or 87,654. Read your low hand as a number, starting with the highest card and working down. The player with the hand/number closest to 54,321 wins (or ties if someone else has the same hand/number). Omaha players often speak of “the nut low.” This is the best possible low in this particular hand. While A2 combined with an 876KQ board creates the best low possible, 54 combined with a board of A23KQ makes the nut low in another case. And, 23 combined with a 764KA board makes the nut low (64,321), not an A2, which only can make a 76,421. If you get confused by how your cards are paired or counterfeited by the board, at the showdown, show your hand and ask the dealer to read exactly what your low hand is.

Omaha is a game of nut hands, so as hands unfold, practice reading what the nut low hand is. Then start thinking of your low hand in relation to the nut low. It’s not important to know how low your low is, what matters is how low your low is in comparison to the nut low.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Poker, Online, Strategy, Omaha. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.