Pot Limit Omaha Rules
In Omaha hi/lo, the pot can be a split pot if there is a qualifying low hand. To qualify as a low hand, the player must have five unpaired cards that are 8 or lower. An ace counts as the lowest card in a qualifying low hand, and flushes and straights do not effect the low value. The best 'low' hand would be an ace through five straight (A2345). Omaha is usually played with either pot-limit or limit betting rules. For more on the different betting structures in poker, check out our guide to Poker Betting Rules. Pot Limit Omaha is commonly called “PLO”, and is the second-most popular poker game in the world, behind Texas Hold’em. Just like in pot-limit Omaha, players are dealt four cards in Omaha hi-lo and are required to use two of those four cards in combination with three community cards in order to make a five-card.
Learn how to play Pot Limit Omaha with this quick and easy guide to learning the Omaha Rules
If you already know how to play No Limit Hold Em then picking up the Omaha Rules should be a cakewalk (if you haven’t then familiarise yourself with them now before you continue). Although the differences in strategy between the two games are immense the rules are actually very similar. Here are the ways in which PLO (or Pot Limit Omaha) differs from NLHE:
In Pot Limit Omaha rules you are dealt 4 cards instead of 2. Here is an example hand:
Like in Hold ’em the object is to make the best 5 card hand but unlike in NLHE you must use exactly 2 cards from your hand and 3 from the board (the community cards). This is different from No Limit Hold ‘Em where you can play any 5 cards out of the 5 on board and the 2 in your hand. To illustrate how this difference matters let’s take a look at a sample board that might fall in PLO or NLHE:
Take the example hand I gave you above: at first glance it might look like you have an ace high flush but you actually don’t as you can only play three of the diamonds from the board. This means that in Omaha Rules you cannot ever make a flush unless you have at least 2 of a suit in your hand. On this board your actual hand is two pair, tens and fours with a Q kicker. Because of this neccessity to play 2 cards from your hand and 3 from the board the value of having a coordinated 4card hand is vastly increased. Hands that are “double-suited” are considered higher in value because they have more chances of making a flush.
Here are a few more hands with possible boards for you to look at:
| Your Hand | The Board |
|---|
Hand #1 You have trips with an Ace and a seven as kickers. In Hold ‘Em having an ace when quads fall on the board gives you the nuts. In this situation however you’re losing to anybody with a pair in their hand or a higher kicker to go with their ace. Omaha Rules dictate you can only play three cards from the board.
Hand #2 Again you have trips, this time with a Q kicker. In Hold ‘Em having a 9 on this board would give you a fullhouse, but as you can only use three cards from the board in Omaha Rules your final holding is instead Q♠9♠9♣9♦5♥and you would be losing to somebody holding, say 5♣3♦2♠4♥ as they would have a full house.
Hand #3 In the final hand I’m sure you’re beginning to see the pattern. Rather than the 7♥ in our hand making us a straight we actually just have a single pair of aces. If we changed the K♠ to either a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or an 8 our hand strength would then improve to a straight which should give you some idea of how dangerous a board like this is with such a vulnerable hand as just one pair.
Betting
The only other thing you need to know regarding Omaha Rules before you start playing is that in PLO you can’t always just shove “all in”. The “Pot” in “Pot Limit Omaha” refers to the maximum bet or raise you can make when the action is on you. This means it’s rare to see all the money go in pre-flop, rather the game lends itself to more complex and skillful multi-street decisions. If you’ve ever played Pot Limit Hold ‘Em you’ll be familiar with the way betting pot is calculated, it’s really very simple but can sometimes throw people off when they’re raising somebody.
Imagine there is $10 in the pot, your opponent bets $10 and you would like to raise the maximum you are allowed. Your pot raise is not $20 but rather whatever the pot would have been after your call. So here if you called the pot would be $30 so raising the pot is to call and then raise $30. So when the bet is to you, raising “for pot” would be a raise to $40 ($30 for your opponent to call).
Of course if you’re playing online it doesn’t matter much because you can just click the pot button, but it’s nice to know for those times you get your friends round for a home game and people aren’t so familiar with the Omaha Rules.
Where to play Pot Limit Omaha?
Now that you know the Omaha rules you’ll want to make sure you’re playing at the site which hosts the best games. Whereas almost all of the big name websites host hundreds of NLHE tables simultaneously, the differences between them when it comes to their Pot Limit Omaha action is substantial.
You’ll want to consider several factors when choosing which sites you’re going to do the majority of your playing at. These include the number of games running at any one time, the quality of the software and, perhaps most importantly of all, how fishy their players are.
With that in mind I took it upon myself to sign up at all the cardrooms that offer Pot Limit Omaha as a game, play a few thousand hands at each of them, find out which ones are best and then share that information with you. You can read my full conclusions at my “Where to play PLO” guide. Once you’ve signed up (and make sure you take maximum advantage of the sign up bonuses they offer) at your chosen site(s) it’ll then be time to start working on your strategy. Thankfully you’re already at the right website for that!
How To Calculate The Pot In PLO
The most common betting structure for Omaha is Pot Limit. Unlike No-Limit Hold’em, where you can bet all your chips at any point, in Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), the maximum you can bet is the size of the pot. (The same minimums apply as in No-Limit Hold’em.)
Unfortunately, calculating exactly how much the “pot limit” is in PLO is less straightforward than it might seem. In this article we are going to explain how to calculate the maximum bet in PLO given your situation.
Suppose you are first to act on the flop, and there is $20 in the pot. This case is simple – you can bet up to $20.
It’s more complicated though if you are already facing a bet, because you have to include the cost of your call into the pot size.
This sounds very strange at first, and it is. In other words, the pot size is defined as:
- the amount in the pot before your opponent bet PLUS
- your opponent’s bet PLUS
- the amount you would have to put in to call.
Once you come up with that number, that is the amount you’re allowed to RAISE (on top of the cost to call).
Let’s take an example of that so it will be clearer. There is $20 in the pot on the flop, and your opponent bets $10.
- the amount in the pot before your opponent bet: $20
- your opponent’s bet: $10
- the amount you would have to put in to call: $10
Add those all up and we get $40, which is the amount you can RAISE (in addition to the $10 you would have to put in to call). In other words, you can put in $50 total.
If that’s confusing, there is a short-hand for the math. You can bet three times the last bet plus whatever was in the pot before that bet. Note that the last “bet” is only on the current round of betting. So if you are the first to bet on the flop, turn, or river, there is has been $0 bet so far. The previous street’s betting has no effect (except to create what is in the pot currently). Pre-flop, the posted blinds are bets, so if you raise you must consider the value of the blinds in your calculation.
Let’s look at several examples of using the “Rule of Three”.
Example #1
Question: Pre-flop, you are under the gun. The blinds are $5 and $10. What is the maximum you can bet?
Answer: The last “bet” (the big blind) was $10, and what was in the pot before that was $5. So the math is (3 x $10) + $5. You can bet up to $35.
Example #2
Question: Pre-flop, you are on the button. The blinds are $1 and $2. There are three limpers in front of you. What is the maximum you can bet?
Answer: The last “bet” was $2 (the final limper), and what was in the pot before that was $7 (the blinds plus 2 other limpers). So the math is (3 x $2) + $7. You can bet up to $13.
Example #3
Question: In a $2/$5 game, there is $15 in the pot pre-flop. On the flop, you want to open for pot. What is the maximum you can bet?
Answer: This is the easy one! No betting has been conducted in this round. So you can match what’s in the pot pre-flop. You can bet $15.
What Is Plo Poker
Example #4
Question: There is $10 in the pot. Player A in front of you bets $5. What is the maximum you can bet?
Plo Hi Lo Rules
Answer: The last bet was $5. There was $10 in the pot before that. (3 x $5) + $10 = $25. You can bet up to $25.
Example #5
Question: There is $10 in the pot. Player A bets $5. Player B raises to $25. What is the maximum you can bet?
Answer: The last bet is $25. There was $15 in pot before that. (3 x $25) + $15 = $90. You can bet up to $90.
At first calculating the pot limit can seem daunting. Eventually you will get the hang of it. In the meantime, you can always just announce that you bet “pot” and the dealer will figure it out for you!
When playing on OmahaPokerTraining.com, you can use the bet slider to see the minimum and maximum amount you can legally bet or raise. Slide the bar all the way to the left and you’ll see the minimum amount. Slide all the way to the right to see the maximum (“pot”) bet.