New to Omaha? PokerNews Has You Covered
Today's Event 20: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split 8-or-Better is yet another tournament at the 2012 World Series of Poker that includes a game other than No-Limit Hold'em. The game we're talking about is Omaha Hi-Low.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the game, you can refer to the PokerNews Poker Rules: Omaha Poker page to check things out and get a feel for how the game is played. The page is complete with game rules, terms and also strategy links.
Omaha is similar to Hold'em in that it is a flop game, but instead of two hole cards, you receive four. The trick is that you must you two cards from your hole cards and only two cards, to make your best five-card hand at the end. This is the part that sometimes confuses people new to the game as they'll make the mistake of only using one card from their hand or trying to use three. This game is also a split-pot game with the high hand getting half of the pot and the low hand getting the other half of the pot. Just like Hold'em, there is a betting round preflop followed a betting round after each of the flop, turn and river.
For example, let's say there is a final board reading 
and Player 1 shows 
versus Player 2's 
. In this showdown, Player 1 would win the high half of the pot with trip queens and an ace kicker. Player 1 also has a qualifying low hand with his , but Player 2's makes a better qualifying low hand to win that half of the pot.
In the Omaha 8-or-better case where players share a high hand or low hand, they would divy up that half of the pot accordingly. This is why the term "quartered" often comes into play during games of Omaha 8-or-better. In the above example, if a third player in the hand held 
, he would split the half portion of the pot with Player 2, meaning they would each get one quarter of the overall pot.