The rules of Omaha Hi/Lo are somewhat complicated due to some specific hand ranking issues. However if you already know the rules of Omaha Hi it wouldn’t be especially hard after all.

Omaha Hi/Lo is a so-called split game – the pot is split by the highest and the lowest hand. However, there are cases then only the highest hand wins. The criteria’s for a legitimate low hand is that there are five cards in total (remember that you always must use two cards of your own hand and three cards from the board in Omaha) that’s eight or lower, this is also the reason of the second name of this poker variant: eight-or-better.

If none player have a hand consisting of five cards that have values, eight or lower the highest hand will take down the whole pot. So in this case the standard hand ranking is used.

Theirs is also some special cases there a player indeed have five cards that are 8 or lower, but still can’t count this as a low hand. This is according to the rule of duplicated cards. Duplicated cars (i.e. pairs and so on) can’t be counted as low cards. Let’s take an example:

Player 1 has the following four cards: Q♥ A♣ 2♦ K♠ and the community cards are on the turn: J♥ 9♣4♥ 5♣. For the moment the player 1 has the low hand: A-2-4-5-7, which is a legitimate low hand. The river is a 4, and this means that there are duplicated fours and they can’t be used anymore in a low hand. Therefore, Player 1 doesn’t have a low hand.

When there are enough low cards on the board and at least two non duplicated cards in one of the players hands the lowest hand will win the half pot. On the same time, the highest hand will win the other half of the pot.

Theirs is also the possibility that one player has both the best low and high hand and in this case he wins the whole pot. So an important rule here is that he can use all four of his cards – two for each low and high.

It often occurs that more when two players have to split the pot. Most often is the case of one player winning the high and two other players have the same low hand. I this situation the high hand taking the half pot and the two low hands are splitting the rest of the money.

Omaha Hi/Lo poker rules

Omaha Hi/Lo – rules

When only the highest hand wins

When both high and low hand wins

Split pot by more than two players