It’s about time everyone learned the great game of Omaha. This game is almost identical to Texas Hold’em, the most popular poker variant in the world for the past 20-plus years. The key difference with Omaha is that you get four hole cards instead of two. That gives you a lot more ways to make big hands, and makes it even more important that you understand the Omaha poker hand rankings before you play at Ignition.
This will be relatively easy if you’re making the transition from Hold’em. Omaha poker hands are graded using the same rankings; however, many people are jumping directly into Omaha games these days, so if you’re one of those intrepid players, you might not be familiar with the rules yet. Also, there’s a variant called Omaha Hi/Lo where you’re trying to make the best hand and the worst hand at the same time. To make sure you’re starting off on the right foot, we’ll cover all of the hand rankings for Omaha poker – real money is at stake, so you’ll definitely want to get these down pat from the beginning.
Importance of Hand Rankings
Whichever online poker game you choose (Texas Hold’em, Omaha or Omaha Hi/Lo), make sure you learn the rankings for the “high” hands first. These rankings apply to all three variants at Ignition Poker. Even if you’re playing Omaha Hi/Lo, every hand you play will have a winning high, but there won’t always be a qualifying low. We’ll explain that further a little later on.
Best Poker Hands in Order
Here are all the possible high hands you can make in Omaha. Again, if you’re already familiar with the hand rankings from Texas Hold’em, you can skip this part, but you might want to continue reading to make sure you’ve learned everything correctly.
Royal Flush
A Royal Flush (aka “Royal” for short) isn’t as rare in Omaha as Hold’em, but it’s still rare enough. You need Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of the same suit – which suit doesn’t matter as far as strength goes.
Straight Flush
A Straight Flush consists of five consecutive cards, all of the same suit. As in Hold’em, the Ace counts as both the highest and lowest card in Omaha. The lowest possible Straight Flush is Five-Four-Three-Deuce-Ace suited, also known as the steel wheel.
Four of a Kind
Four of a Kind is, well, four of a kind: all four cards from a specific rank – the higher, the better. This is also known as quads.
Full House
The Full House, also known as a boat, has three cards from one rank and two cards from another. The best possible full house is “Aces full of Kings,” as in the example below. The worst possible Full House is Deuces full of Threes.
Flush
A Flush is five cards of the same suit, non-consecutive. An Ace-high Flush (aka the nut flush) is the highest possible Flush – and the nuts are very, very important in Omaha.
Straight
A Straight in Omaha is not that big of a deal. This is when you get five consecutive cards that don’t make a Straight Flush or Royal Flush. The nut Straight is Ace-King-Queen-Jack-Ten, aka Broadway; the nut low Straight is Five-Four-Three-Deuce-Ace for the wheel.
Three of a Kind
Three of a Kind is three cards of the same rank. It’s usually called a set when you use both of your hole cards, and trips if you use one hole card and two from the board.
Two Pair
Two Pair is two cards of the same rank, plus two more paired cards from a different rank. “Aces up” is when you have Two Pair including two Aces; in this example, we have “Jacks up.” The fifth unpaired card is known as the kicker, and is used as a tie-breaker when two players have the exact same Two Pair.
Pair
It’s hard not to make a Pair in Omaha. This is when you have just two matching cards, which isn’t easy when you have four hole cards and five community cards to work with. Kickers will come into play more often when Pairs are involved – even the second and the third kicker might be required to break a tie.
High Card
You didn’t match any cards at all? In theory, Ace-High can still win a hand of Omaha. It could happen. Get ready to muck your hand, though.
“Worst” Poker Hands in Order
When you play Omaha Hi/Lo> – and you should definitely give this game a try, especially during one of our major series of online poker tournaments at Ignition – the pot is split between the winning high hand and the winning low, provided there is one. All five cards for your low have to have a value of Eight or less; straights and flushes don’t count. That leaves you with these four potential low hands, starting with the nut low.
Five-High
The wheel is the lowest possible hand in Omaha Hi/Lo – and it’s also a great high hand, even more so if it’s the steel wheel.
Six-High
There are five different ways you can make Six-High. The second nut low is Six-Four-Three-Deuce-Ace, followed by Six-Five-Three-Deuce-Ace, Six-Five-Four-Deuce-Ace (as seen below), Six-Five-Four-Three-Ace, and finally, Six-Five-Four-Three-Deuce. To make this easier to understand, always start reading your hand from the highest valued card to the lowest. You can also use shorthand and say you have a “64” or a “6-smooth” when you have the second nut low. The other hands in this rank are all “65” hands.
Seven-High
Once you include the seven in your low hand, your chances of winning fall off significantly. A “74” or “7-smooth” is still a powerful hand, and you’ll often win with a “75” like the one in this example, but as the other four cards get higher in value, you’ve got what’s known in lowball poker as a “rough” Seven.
Eight-High
Getting an Eight-High in Omaha Hi/Lo is a bit like making a Pair for your high hand – it might win, but you don’t want to go crazy with your betting. That’s even more true when you have an “87” like the example below, particularly if it’s the roughest low in the game: Eight-Seven-Six-Five-Four.
Poker Hand Probabilities
If you look at the probabilities of making each possible hand in Texas Hold’em, you’ll see that making Three of a Kind or better is pretty rare: You’ll get a hand this good just 15.3% of the time once all seven cards are dealt. Add two more hole cards, however, and your chances improve dramatically. Here are the probabilities for making each Omaha high hand by the river:
Royal Flush 0.0092%
Straight Flush 0.0795%
Four of a Kind 0.48%
Full House 6.35%
Flush 6.73%
Straight 11.28%
Three of a Kind 8.78%
Two Pair 36.84%
Pair 26.46%
High Card 2.99%
Note how the distribution of possible hands is skewed by those extra hole cards. It’s actually easier to make a Straight than Three of a Kind, and easier to make Two Pair than just a single Pair. This is why it’s so important to make a really big hand in Omaha and to make the nut hand for that ranking.
Next, we have the probabilities for making each possible low hand in Omaha Hi/Lo:
Five-High 1.60%
Six-High 5.57%
Seven-High 11.15%
Eight-High 16.48%
That only adds up to around 35%, which explains why it’s so important to focus on making the high hand in Omaha Hi/Lo. Making both the high and low is ideal, but two-thirds of the time, you’re not going to get a qualifying low by the river.
Poker Hand Range and Strength
As you can see by these percentages, Omaha is all about making big hands – that’s part of the excitement. A hand like Two Pair can be worth betting all three streets (flop, turn and river) in Texas Hold’em, but in Omaha, you might have to fold it on the flop. Also, since the high-only version of Omaha is usually played as a Pot-Limit game, you don’t have as much leverage to bet big and get people to fold as you do in No-Limit Hold’em.
Omaha Hi/Lo, on the other hand, is more commonly played using the Fixed-Limit betting structure. This means your Two Pair won’t cost you as much money as it would in Omaha high – in fact, it will win more often, since your opponent might only have a low hand. Be careful with those lows, though. There will be times when you have Ace-Deuce in your hole cards and you make the nut low, but so does someone else, and they also end up beating you for the high hand. You’ll only win one-fourth of the pot when this happens; this is called getting quartered. Try to be the one winning three-quarters of the pot instead, and put as many bets into the pot as you can when you’re in that situation.
Getting used to all the different low hands in Omaha Hi/Lo can take a while, so as a beginner, you might want to download some Omaha poker charts from a reliable source, and refer to them while you try some Play Money games. Save the real money games for when you’re more familiar with the rules. Once you understand these rankings, it’s time to play some Omaha – mobile poker and desktop versions are both available at Ignition. We’ll see you on the felt.