Omaha is a poker game that is tough to learn, but that is a lot of fun to play. It would be a lot more fun if you knew how to play Omaha properly. This article will teach you how to play Lowball poker.
Understanding the Rules
Omaha is played exactly the same way as five-card stud or lowball. The difference is that the winner should have less than the least amount of cards.
Each player will receive four cards, and the player with the fifth highest card should start off the game. In poker terms this would be the ‘Small Blind’. The player with the ‘ strongest’ poker hand will be in the ‘Big Blind’.
The ‘Small Blind’
Each player is dealt a total of four cards, face down. Then there is a round of betting, where you place the amount of money you want to bet. If you are in the ‘Small Blind’ and you do not bet then you will fall under the ‘blind’. If a player in the blind does not bet, then the player in the big blind who placed the small blind will be the first one to bet.
The ‘Big Blind’
Each player is dealt another card face up. Once again, there is gambling – placing the amount of money you want to bet. If you are in the ‘Big Blind’ there is no limit to what you can bet, so this should be taken into account when formulating your own strategy.
Once the betting is over, the hand is completed. The player with the best hand wins, if there is a tie then the next round of betting will take place.
The Whole Story
When you are introduced to the concept of poker, you may have a few mixed up thoughts. You may start thinking that it is not poker, when in actual fact it is many types of poker. Lowball poker is a very easy game to learn, and is very popular the world over. It is not hard to win, and end up making money from playing it.
It only has three cards, and the best hand you can get is three of a kind, which is very hard to achieve. You can get a full house and still lose, if you have more than three of a kind the odds are heavily against you. This is one of the reasons that casinos, and many other places keep telling you to stay in your seat and not move to get a better hand, because the odds are so heavily stacked against you.
The whole point of Lowball poker is that you don’t need a very good hand to win. If you can get a good hand then you can win. The game is played mainly for the sheer fact that if you can get a lower hand than the dealer then you win, unless there is a full moon. Even if you have to give up half of your money to the casino in order to qualify for the tournament there is still the possibility you will win at least one coin.
Only the dealer wins, the players don’t, and the casino takes a five percent commission on the buy-in, not the players. This is the entire monetary difference between lowball and traditional poker, and it is this reason that Lowball poker is commonly referred to as a ‘Dominobet‘ in the poker playing community.
If you understand poker, then you can learn Lowball poker. According to Gus Hansen, the author of the ‘Modern Poker’ book, the poker game is all about trying to get as close to the statistical average as possible, this means playing your cards in a way that will result in you having a hand that is at least as good as the one the dealer has.
So you can play poker in a style that will hopefully result in you having a better hand than the house. This is called ‘playing the player’, for instance you might have been dealt a pair of queens but you can opt to throw them away and instead elect to only play the banker as your best hand.
Playing the player in Lowball poker means that the player is trying to get the best hand possible, where the odds to win are more in their favour than they themselves, this is also the name given to poker when talking about the best hand you can have at any one time.