Limit Omaha Rules

Omaha is a game type popular with many poker players. You may have seen professional poker players on TV shows like Poker After Dark, playing a strange variant of poker with a fistful of cards – this is Omaha poker. Omaha has also come to prominence as players like Patrick Antonius and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom play Pot Limit Omaha online, leading to some of the biggest pots in online poker history. Pot Limit Omaha (abbreviated as PLO) is the most popular form of Omaha poker played in both tournaments and cash games among poker pros. When it comes to high stakes cash games, Pot Limit Omaha rules supreme with players like Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein and Joe Hachem all favouring high stakes PLO tournaments and Heads Up cash games. While it may seem daunting at first, for most poker players, the jump from playing Texas Hold ‘Em to Omaha poker is an easy one, and can be picked up in just a few short sessions.

The rules of Omaha hi-lo is usually played with a 'qualifier' for the low hand, meaning all of the cards making up a low hand have to be ranked eight or lower. That's where the 'split-8-or-better'. Rules of the Game. Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) is the second most popular poker game in the world. Ten years ago it was somewhat difficult to find a live game going outside of Europe but now many card rooms spread PLO regularly.

The game of Omaha Poker is similar to Texas Hold ‘Em, but with a key difference: after the blinds have been posted, with Omaha rules, each player is dealt four hole cards instead of two. So your starting hand is four cards, of which you may use only two as your hole cards in the making your final five card hand. There’s still a flop, turn and river, and the aim is still to make the best five card hand – but each player may only use two of their hole cards, as well as three community cards from the board in their final five card hand. Omaha can have anywhere from 2-10 players at a table, although 6-max is the most common format if playing Omaha online.

It used to be the case that a lot of new players started out at limit poker, as the decisions that need to be made are definitely simpler. This guide will introduce you to Limit Omaha – If you are already at this level and would like to read more strategy then feel free to advance to our Fixed Limit Omaha strategy guide. Limit poker eliminates the need to calculate bet sizes, as they are already determined by the rules of the game.

For instance, in $1/$2 fixed limit, the blinds are always the smaller number for the big blind, and half that for the small blind. So in this case the blinds would be $0.50/$1. In the pre-flop round, players would have the option of calling the big blind, or limping, or putting in a raise.

Raises are always double the bet size, and in the case of pre-flop action the bet is the big blind. So a raise here would be for $2. Should other players choose to re-raise, they would be for $4, $6, and $8. Should the action get to this stage, no more raises are permitted and players can either call the $8 or fold.

On the flop, the prescribed bet size is $2, and once again raises are made in increments of $2, with the raises once again capped at $8. On the turn and river, everything doubles, so we have an opening bet size of $4, with three raises permitted with a cap now of $16.

So this is all pretty standard for limit poker, and is the same format as is used for Texas Hold’em. As opposed to Pot Limit Omaha, the other popular format that you see, players don’t have to decide how much they will bet, which ranges from the minimum size bet up to the size of the pot.

So it’s easy to see how things are made simpler with Limit Omaha, although there are a lot of players who may never even have played limit poker before, due to the huge popularity of big bet poker over the last few years, and in particular, the No Limit format, where players can bet up to their whole stacks at any time.

Limit Poker Tends To Be Even Looser

In limit poker is that there tends to be more people in pots, due to the general lesser cost of playing on. Since you often have to pay a smaller amount of money relative to the size of the pot in order to stay in hands, in limit poker it’s actually correct to fold less.

However, with this said, limit poker is said to be more of a mathematical game than pot limit and no limit. Since the opportunity to make money with hands is less, it’s even more important to be accurate with your odds calculations.

This is particularly important in Fixed Limit Omaha, as given the fact that everyone has four hole cards instead of the two that you get with Hold’em, there are a lot more opportunities for draws, and in fact, the winning hand most often is one that hit draws later in the hand. So having a good idea of your odds is definitely an advantage.

However, Fixed Limit Omaha Tends To Have Less Skilled Players

If you find this complexity intimidating, you do need to realize that Fixed Limit Omaha is going to generally attract the worst Omaha players out there, and therefore, all you really need is to develop a good feel about what you are doing to get a good edge on them.

As is the case generally with Omaha these days, too many players play too loose, and therefore, you can get a step on them simply by playing tighter than they do. Having said this though, playing fairly loose is required in Omaha, and especially in Fixed Limit Omaha. If you fold too much, you will be throwing away a lot of hands that had the proper odds to call, especially since the cost of calling tends to be so much lower than you would see in Pot Limit.

To give you a simple example of this, imagine that you are in a hand with another player. If you are playing pot limit, and your opponent leads out with a pot sized bet, then you are going to need a lot better hand to call then if the bet was only a quarter of the pot or less, as we often would see in fixed limit.

Fixed Limit Also Ensures Your Risk Exposure Is Minimized

Since it is correct to call so often in fixed limit, and newer players definitely tend to be on the loose side, this also makes your natural tendencies fit the game more. What I mean here is that if you tend to call a little too much in general, not only will you be making less mistakes in Limit Omaha, the amount of money that these mistakes will cost you will tend to be less as well.

Pot Limit Omaha Hi Rules

Fixed limit poker also has less variance than pot or no limit, meaning that the swings in your bankroll will be less. This is particularly important for those new to the game or perhaps new to poker in general, where players haven’t built their skills enough yet to be profitable long term.

So if your expectations at the present time are to be losing money, you want to keep your losses small enough that you can handle them. While you may be able to make another deposit when you bust out, you don’t want to be doing any more of this than you have to, unless you have a lot of money that you can lose while you’re learning and don’t really mind putting in deposit after deposit.

While proper bankroll management in this situation does require that you limit the size of the stakes that you play, you can also limit your losses more effectively by sticking to formats where you can lose less money at period. So given that this is the case with Limit Omaha, if you can get in on games at a similar or even a little higher stake then what you could be playing at pot limit, it definitely can make sense to play the fixed limit version while you look to get better at the game in general.

The Differences Between Omaha And Hold’em

Omaha and Hold’em are actually pretty similar games, at least on the face of things. The blinds are posted, players get dealt their down cards, and then there are four rounds of betting: pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river.

The difference though with Omaha is that you get dealt four down cards instead of two, and you need to use exactly two of your hole cards and exactly three cards from the board to make your five card hand.

What this means though is that you can make a lot bigger hands in Omaha than you can at Hold’em, and it also takes a lot bigger hand generally to win pots in Omaha. The reason isn’t just having twice as many hole cards to use, it’s also the fact that there tends to be more players in the pot in Omaha.

More players mean that you need a better hand to win, more cards mean that you need a better hand to win, and when you put the two together, well we really are talking some big hands here that you generally need.

In Hold’em, made hands generally win a lot of pots, and while players do draw out on you to beat you, you definitely see this a lot more in Omaha. So Omaha really is a game of drawing, and not only do you need to pay attention to the odds, as you always do when you look to draw, you also have to pay close attention to the chances that you will actually win the pot when you hit your draw.

Even In Limit Omaha, You Need To Pay Close Attention To Reverse Implied Odds

If you’ve played any amount of Hold’em, you will be familiar with situations where you were drawing to a big hand, hit it, got your stack in with it, and lost to an even bigger hand. This happens a fair bit in Hold’em, but is much more likely to happen in Omaha.

The good thing about playing Fixed Limit Omaha is that when this happens, the amount of money that you lose is almost always less, especially since you have two or more players with big hands that they are willing to get their money in with. Where your stack would often be going all in in Pot Limit Omaha in these situations, given the fixed betting structure of fixed limit, you will almost always be getting away a lot cheaper with these mistakes.

No Limit Omaha Rules

At the same time, depending on how many players are involved, fixed limit poker gives you more opportunity to limit your risk even further. If there are only two players in the hand when things get hot and heavy, for instance, then if you choose not to raise, not a lot of money will be going in relatively speaking.

It Really Pays To be Careful In Omaha Though, Even With Fixed Limits

On the other hand, you can still spend a fair bit of money if you both are looking to cap every street, in other words, putting in the maximum amount of raises. So you may have a hand like a king high flush, where an ace high would be the nuts, and you may be unsure if your opponent has it versus a lower flush that you beat. So your hand may be too good to throw away, but at the same time you may want to limit your risk with a hand like this by slowing down.

The time to start thinking about these things though isn’t after you made the hand, it’s before you make it. So this is where the reverse implied odds concept comes in. Implied odds are what you make when you hit it and win, and reverse implied odds are what you lose when you hit it and show it down. So what you really want to be thinking about here is the net amount of money you win when you hit, and use that as your gauge to whether or not it’s worth chasing.

Pot Limit Omaha Rules

As a general rule, if your chances of winning aren’t that high, it’s probably not worth pursuing. As you become better at figuring out when it’s time to fold good draws, this will definitely give you an edge against your opponents.

So While The Mistakes Are Less Costly In Limit, There’s A Time You Want Them To Cost More

As you get your sea legs more, and get better at Omaha in general, it will make sense to look to move over to the much more popular version of Omaha, which is pot limit. While you initially wanted to limit your mistakes, to look to manage your losses better, once you know more about what you are doing, and become better than your opponents, there will come a time when it makes sense to look to leverage this advantage in skill more.

5 Card Pot Limit Omaha Rules

If players will lose more money per mistake, and they make more mistakes than you do, it only stands to reason that you will do better playing a format where they will lose more to you than you lose to them. Pot Limit Omaha definitely allows for this a lot more.

However, the time you may be looking to spend at Fixed Limit Omaha can be time very well spent, and is a great option for those who are looking to become proficient enough at the game of Omaha but have not acquired the necessary skills yet.

So if this is the case for you, check out our links to the very best in Fixed Limit Omaha the internet has to offer.