The Omaha HiLo is a version of the Omaha game where the high hand and low hand splits the pot. The Omaha HiLo can be played with different betting structures such as No Limit, Limit and Pot Limit. The other names of this game (Omaha HiLo) are Better, HiLo, Omaha Eight or plain Eight. The popularity of the Omaha HiLo is basically owed to the fact that it allows for spitting the pot and hence there are more players, which in turn results in larger pots.
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What does the Omaha HiLo Involve?
When you play the Omaha HiLo you are dealt the regular five cards and for these to quality as low hand, none of the cards received should be higher than eight. Your cards should be anything below eight, i.e. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 or Ace. You cannot use a flush or a straight hand when you are playing the low hand; if you get it, you must ignore it. The Omaha requires that you use tow cards – and when you do the other three cards on the board should be lower than eight. The winner is who gets the best low hand; if there are no low hands as per the qualification explained above, the person with the highest cards wins the game.
Some Tips That Would Help You Play the Omaha Hilo
1. Do not jump the gun
– very often, when you are dealt the pair of Ace and a two, you tend to jump and raise the best for the game. Do not do so. Wait and see because there is a lot of danger in raising the best. Some of the possibility of things going awry are – you may not get the next three cards dealt to be below eight; if a 2 shows up on the board you would not be able to use that hand any more until a fourth low card comes up on the board. So be careful.
2. You can loose money by being quartered
– the Ace-deuce pair is a dangerous pair which can make you loose money even if you win the pot. In other words, let us assume that there are three players at the game and two of them have the Ace-deuce combination and both raise the bets – say by US $40. The pot is now worth US $120. Let us now suppose that the third player get a high and collects half of the pot, which is US $60. Now, only US $60 remains and when you show your pair, you are winning a draw which makes a quarter of the pot each, i.e. US $30 each which is US $10 less than what you started with.
3. Pot scooping
– the purpose of the Omaha HiLo is to scoop the pot. Ideally you should have among the five cards you are dealt tow winning low hand cards and two winning high hand cards. This is a winning combination that will give you the whole pot. The other way would be to have the highest ranking cards with no low.