Omaha Hold 'em

Omaha hold 'em

A showdown in Omaha. Player on the left wins with three kings. Exactly two hole cards must be used.
Alternative names	Omaha
Type	Community card poker
Players	2-10
Skills required	Probability, psychology
Cards	52
Deck	French
Play	Clockwise
Card rank (highest to lowest)	A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Random chance	Medium to high

Omaha hold 'em (also known as Omaha holdem or simply Omaha) is a community card poker game similar to Texas hold 'em, where each player is dealt four cards and must make his or her best hand using exactly two of them, plus exactly three of the five community cards. The exact origin of the game is unknown, but casino executive Robert Turner first brought Omaha into a casino setting when he introduced the game to Bill Boyd, who offered it as a game at the Las Vegas Golden Nugget Casino (calling it "Nugget Hold'em"). Omaha uses a 52-card French deck. Limit Omaha hold 'em 8-or-better is the "O" game featured in H.O.R.S.E. Both limit Omaha/8 and pot limit Omaha high are featured in the 8-Game.

Omaha Hold'em gets its name from two types of games.

In the original Omaha poker game, players were only dealt two hole cards and had to use both to make a hand combined with community cards. This version of Omaha is defined in the glossary of Super/System (under Omaha) as being interchangeable with "Tight Holdem". Across all the variations of the game, the requirement of using exactly two hole cards is the only consistent rule. The "Omaha" part of the name represents this aspect of the game.

"Hold'em" refers to a game using community cards that are shared by all players. This is opposed to Draw games where each player's hand is composed only by hole cards and Stud games where each player hand contains both non-community cards that are visible to the other players and concealed hole cards.

In North American casinos, the term "Omaha" can refer to several poker games. The original game is also commonly known as "Omaha high". A high-low split version called "Omaha Hi-Lo", or sometimes "Omaha eight-or-better" or "Omaha/8", is also played. In Europe, "Omaha" still typically refers to the high version of the game, usually played pot-limit. Pot-limit Omaha is often abbreviated as "PLO." Pot-limit and no-limit Omaha eight-or-better can be found in some casinos and online, though no-limit is rarer.