Omaha High/Low

Last night, our poker group played a low-stakes ($5 got you 2000 in chips) "practice" Omaha high-low split tourney after we finished our normal Texas Hold 'Em tourney (which Roxy won again, by the way -- I think it was her third Texas Hold 'Em tourney win in less than a month, which is an outrage).

The Omaha high-low tourney went pretty well, particularly when you consider that it was our group's first attempt at playing this somewhat confusing game. Several of us forgot that you must use two and only two cards -- no more and no less -- from your four pocket cards and three from the board.

One mistake that happened quite a bit is that there would be four suited cards (say, four hearts) on the board, and people holding one heart in their hand assumed that they had a flush when they didn't, because they were using four cards from the board instead of three. The low hands caused some confusion as well.

I don't know about everyone else who played, but I thought it was a lot of fun. What I really like about Omaha high/low split is that when someone raises, you oftentimes don't have the first clue as to whether they are going high, low, or both. So it adds an interesting element that Texas Hold 'Em or normal Omaha just don't have. I also thought that split pot situations would slow the game down considerably, but they really did not.

The real problem, of course, is that alcohol consumption and Omaha high-low do not mix. [Bumper sticker idea: "Friends Don't Let Friends Play Omaha High-Low Drunk"]. Several times, a card was placed on the board on the turn or the river, and everyone's eyes would glaze over because the effect that the new card had on everyone's hand wasn't immediately apparent. This happened a lot when a bunch of low cards were already on the board when yet another low card hit.

One time, I put in a raise and Liz looked over at me to try to get a tell. I told her that in order for someone to project a tell, that person must first have a clear understanding of what he or she is actually holding. Since I oftentimes did not have such an understanding, any "tell" I might have been projecting would be of limited value.

Anyway, I think the solution to that problem might be to start our poker evening with a quick 1.5 to 2-hour long Omaha high-low tourney -- you know, before the alcohol starts to grab hold -- and then play the normal hold 'em tourney afterwards. We could, of course, let people in our group know that the Omaha high/low warm-up tourney will happen at 7:00, followed at 9 PM by the "main event" Texas Hold 'Em tourney. That way, they could choose to skip the high/low tourney if they wanted and only show for the Texas Hold 'Em event.