The games · Coolhand Poker

Omaha

Four cards of your own and five shared. Your hand is exactly two of yours and exactly three from the middle, no more and no fewer.

18+ · Nothing to win but the hand.

Players: 2 to 9
Family: Flop Games
App: Coolhand Poker · iOS and Android, soon

How it goes

You're dealt four cards face down, and the middle fills up the same way as in Hold'em: five shared cards face up, with a round of offers (tokens into the pool, matched or passed) at each stage. One rule changes everything: your final hand is exactly two of your four cards and exactly three of the five in the middle. So four aces in your hand play as one pair of aces, and a single card of a suit never makes a flush (five cards of one suit), however many of that suit are in the middle. The highest five-card hand made that way takes the pool.

A good hand

Four cards that work together in pairs. Two high pairs is a strong start, and so are high cards in two suits that sit next to each other in rank. There are six ways to pick two cards from four, and you want as many of those six as possible to be worth something. Several strong pairings beat one big card and three strangers.

The usual mistake

Counting the hand the Hold'em way. Four of one suit in the middle and one in your hand is not a flush here, and a run on the board that you hold no cards for isn't yours. Someone whose two cards join three from the middle into a run has one; you don't. It's two from your hand and three from the middle every time, so count it twice before you put tokens in.

Played differently where you are?

Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Omaha 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.