"Omaha Hi-Lo looks almost like Texas Hold'em, which you've already mastered if you've been following the 'suggested path'. But, you can expect four major differences:

• Omaha Hi-Lo is a high-low split game, meaning the best low hand and the best high hand divide the pot (if the same person takes both it's called a 'scoop'). This means there are more players in each pot, more chips in the center of the table, and more action.

• Each player must make his best five-card hand by using exactly two cards from his hand and three communal cards. In Hold'em, you can form the best hand using two, one, or even none of your private cards. If you are playing Hold'em and you hold the ace of spades when the board contained four additional spades, you have a flush. But in Omaha, you have nothing at all. That's because you must play two cards—no more, no less—to make a valid Omaha hand.

• Because you have four cards to work with, you can form six different starting combinations. In other words, by receiving four private cards, you have six times as many potential starting hands as you do in Hold'em. As a result, the winning hands tend to be quite a bit bigger than they are in Hold'em.

• Straights and flushes are common; and two pair, which is often a winning hand in Hold'em, seldom wins in this game. Regardless of how powerful a high hand you make, whenever three unpaired communal cards with a rank of 8 or lower are on the board, someone probably made a low hand and that big pot you were hoping to win has effectively been chopped in half." ¹

1. Reprinted with permission, from "Poker for Dummies", by Richard D. Harroch and Lou Krieger, IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. ©2000