Hold'Em and Omaha
A quick rundown of some of the games your likely to find at your local cardroom
A quick rundown of some of the games your likely to find at your local cardroom
No Limit Texas Hold’Em (NLHE) is the Cadillac of Poker; it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. So how do you play? If NLHE is the Cadillac of Poker, then what’s the Toyota, BMW, or Ford of Poker?
Limit, Pot Limit, and No Limit Hold’Em
No Limit Texas Hold’Em is the most recognizable form of poker today. Most of the poker tournaments broadcast on television are NLHE.
Seating Positions
In setting up a game of Texas Hold’Em, there are three positions of note: The Dealer (also known as the button), the small blind, and the big blind. The blinds are forced bets designed to encourage action in the game. The three positions are always right next to each other. For example, in a ten-handed game, if seat 1 is the Dealer, then seat 2 is the small blind, and seat 3 is the big blind. After each hand is completed, each position moves clockwise by one seat; in the next hand, the Dealer would be in seat 2, and the small and big blinds would be in seats 3 and 4, respectively.
Gameplay
The object is to make the best possible five-card poker hand with any combination of five community cards and your two “hole” cards. There are four rounds of betting in each hand.
- First, the small blind and the big blind put in their “blinds” and then, starting with the player in the small blind, each player is dealt two cards face down (each player should have one card before the second card is dealt); these are your hole cards. The first round of betting ensues. Each round of betting starts with the first player to the left of the dealer who has not folded. It continues clockwise until all players have either called or folded.
- After the first round of betting, the dealer discards (or burns – this is done to prevent cheating) the top card and puts the next three cards face up in the middle of the table; these community cards are known as the “flop.” Players can now raise, call, or fold based on what they see in the flop.
- After the second round of betting, the dealer burns the top card again and puts out a fourth community card, known as the “turn” card. The players would then complete the third round of betting and, after another burn card, the fifth and final community card, the “river” card, is placed on the table. The fourth and final round of betting follows.
Limit, Pot-Limit, and No-Limit
There are three main betting variations of Texas Hold’Em. The most popular is No Limit. In NLHE, when it’s your turn to act, you can bet or raise all of your chips.
A close cousin is Pot Limit Hold’Em or PLHE. In Pot Limit, you can only bet or raise as many chips as are in the pot. For example, let’s say you’re involved in a hand of PLHE. There’s $100 in the pot and your opponent has “bet the pot” or bet $100. Now, there’s a total of $200 in the pot, and it’s your turn to act. At this point you can fold, call the $100 bet or raise. If you want to raise, you would first announce “raise” and put in $100 to match your opponents bet. Now the value of the pot is $300, so you’d be able to raise up to another $300 or make it a total of up to $400 (your initial $100 + the $300 raise) to go.
In Limit Hold’Em (LHE), the betting and raising are all in predetermined increments. For example, in a 20-40 LHE game, the first two betting rounds are all in increments of $20 and the last two rounds are in increments of $40. You must bet, call, or raise in these predetermined increments. In LHE, there’s also a cap on the number of bets and raises per round. Usually, there is a maximum of one bet and three raises (sometime four raises) in each betting round.
Limit and Pot Limit Omaha Hi
Another popular flop game is Pot Limit Omaha (PLO). The rules of this game are very similar to Pot Limit Hold’Em with a few key differences. The basic game setup is exactly the same, but instead of being dealt two hole cards, you are dealt four hole cards. You still have five community cards. This makes for a great action game, where you can make a huge variety of winning hands. In Hold’Em, the goal was to take your two hole cards and the five community cards and make your best possible five-card hand. This means that you could use both your hole cards and three community cards, one of your hole cards and four community cards, or none of your hole cards and all five of the community cards (an example of this would be if the five community cards form a Royal Flush). In PLO, this concept is the same, however, you must use any two of your four hole cards and three of the community cards to make your best five-card hand.
At first glance, these two games seem fairly similar. Same structure, same flop, same turn, and same river. If you take a deeper look, the games are vastly different. In Hold’Em, when you take a look at the “before the flop” hand versus hand percentages, your hand can potentially be a big favorite versus another hand. For example, if you hold pocket Aces and your opponent holds pocket sevens, you’re about a 4 to 1 favorite. In Omaha Hi, you’re very rarely more than a 3 to 2 favorite because of all the possible combinations of cards. The games often play in accordance with the pre-flop mathematics. In Hold’Em (excluding low limits), you’ll often see the pots contested two-handed or three-handed, even at a full table. In Omaha, any hand is rarely a big favorite over another hand, so you’ll see pots are three, four, five-handed or more! Hold’Em tends to be a more conservative game in comparison to Omaha. Usually, on any given day, there’s a lot more gambling going on at the PLO table!
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