Have you ever played Texas Hold’em and wished you had more than two hole cards? And then, when you realized Omaha Hold’em was a thing, did you play Omaha and wish you had more than four hole cards? Well, Pot-Limit Five-Card Omaha is also a thing, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that PokerStars has just launched Pot-Limit Six-Card Omaha games.
Six-Card Omaha. That’s right. It’s a good thing that this is online, because a dealer trying to figure out who won would be a mess.
Six-Card Omaha is exactly what it sounds like. It’s an Omaha game where each player receives six hole cards. If it sounds unwieldy, that’s because it is. There is literally nothing about the game that is different than a standard Omaha game except for the number of hole cards. In the end, players still need to use two hole cards and three community cards to form their best five-card hand.
So then what’s the point? Action, that’s the point. Omaha is already a more action-packed poker game than Texas Hold’em because the four hole cards give players more card combinations and therefore more paths to winning.
Six hole cards presents even more possibilities. Virtually everyone will have some sort of card combo that could be played and thus more players are likely to see a flop. Of course, this also means that the average winning hand is going to be stronger than in Omaha, as well. Those six hole cards could be fool’s gold to the novice player.
I, for one, can’t wait to see someone holding trip Aces, all double-suited.
The game is clearly designed to produce more rake for PokerStars. That’s not to say that it can’t be fun to play, but large pots and, in turn, high rake, is the reason for its existence.
Six-Card Omaha could be geared to two different types of players. Recreational players might love it for the action. It’s not boring. And recreational players, if we are going to make sweeping over-generalizations, are usually playing to have fun, not necessarily to consistently win money. Action is fun.
So far, in Six-Card Omaha’s short existence on PokerStars, it looks like recreational players are the one’s trying it out. The highest stakes tables with games active as of late Tuesday afternoon (ET) are $0.10/$0.25. All games are six-handed. Two of the five active tables have more than half the players seeing the flop.
The other type of player who might be drawn to Six-Card Omaha is the pro. That might sound weird, given what I just discussed, but pros often look for something different, something that can give them an action fix. This game is certainly it. And if they think they might have an edge as the game is in its infancy, all the better.
Six-Card Omaha is currently available on the .COM, .EU, and .RUSO clients.
