While Omaha can be played with a variety of betting structures, the two most common are also the only ones used with any kind of regularity: pot-limit and fixed-limit. Yes, it’s possible to play Omaha as a No Limit game, but this is very rare. The way Omaha is played means that structure is key to the betting; it’s simply too draw-oriented and action-heavy to function well as a no limit poker game.
Pot Limit Omaha Betting
This has recently become the most popular variety of Omaha poker, to the point where PLO (as it’s called among its fans online) has become the second most popular poker variant, both in live events at in online poker rooms. It’s become the game of choice for online high-stakes poker players. Here’s how betting works in the game.
• As in Texas Hold ‘Em, betting proceeds clockwise from the button. The player to the right of the button is the small blind and the player on his left is the big blind. The player on his left is under the gun, and acts first.
• The minimum bet is equal to the size of the big blind, assuming that no other players have bet before you on this round.
• The maximum bet is all of the money in the pot and all the money on the table, including any call you would have made before raising. If you’re the first to act with a $15 pot, you can either check or bet and you can bet anywhere from the $10 big blind to the full pot amount of $15. Any bet in between, even if you bet $11, is a legal bet.
• The size of the game is determined by the blind size. Buy-ins in most online poker rooms are usually 20 minimum big blinds and a maximum of 100 big blinds.
Fixed Limit Omaha Betting
Just like the name implies, this is a game where the betting limits are fixed, and the game size is determined by the bet size.
• If you were in a game with $2/$4 blinds, the small bet is $4 and the big bet is $8.
Preflop betting works in increments of the small bet; $4 in the example we’re using for this game. A bet would be equal to $4; a raise would be to a total of $8.
• On the turn and river, however, betting works in increments of the big bet and so a bet would be $8 and a raise would be equal to $16.
• The limit betting structure caps the number of raises with most venues only allowing a maximum of a bet and three raises,
Hopefully, this piece has helped you understand the differences in Omaha poker betting and gives you a way to pick out which games you’ll participate in.