The games · Coolhand Poker

Big O

Five-card Omaha with the pool split between the highest hand and a low of five different cards, eight or under. One hand can win both.

18+ · Nothing to win but the hand.

Players: 2 to 8
Family: Flop Games
App: Coolhand Poker · iOS and Android, soon

How it goes

Five cards face down to you, five shared cards face up in the middle, and a round of offers at each stage (put tokens in, match, or pass). Your final hand is exactly two of your own cards plus exactly three from the middle, and the pool is split in two. Half goes to the best high hand. Half goes to the best low hand: five different cards, all eight or under, with aces low and runs and suits ignored. You choose your two cards separately for each half, from ten pairings each time, so one hand can go high with one pair of cards and low with another. A hand that wins both halves takes the whole pool.

A good hand

An ace and a two with high cards of one suit beside them: a hand that can take the low half, the high half, or both. Half the pool is a fallback, and the hands worth playing are the ones that can win all of it. A hand that only goes one way is settling for half before the shared cards are even out.

The usual mistake

Overvaluing a one-way hand. A high-only hand, in a game where half the pool usually goes to somebody's low, is playing for half the tokens from the first offer. A bare low with nothing for the high is the same mistake the other way. Both cost you each time you match an offer with the whole pool in mind and only half of it in reach.

Played differently where you are?

Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Big O goes differently where you play it, tell us. That's one of the things the closed beta is for.

The closed beta is by invitation. How to ask to join.