Qualifying Low
For those of you not familiar with high-low poker variations the "low" aspect of Omaha-8 may seem confusing at first. Here is the bottom line on low hands in Omaha-8:
A low hand consists of five different cards that are eight or lower. Three of these come from the board and two must come from your hand.
There are some implications of this:
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There must be three cards eight or lower on the board for any low to qualify since you must play exactly three low cards from the board.
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There must be at least two cards eight or lower in your handv for you to qualify for a low.
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A low straight or flush still qualifies as a low. The best possible low is A2345, the worst possible low is 45678.
When the Low Gets Confusing
When there are several low cards on the board and you have several low cards in your hand it can be confusing to read the low. The technique you should use is to first create your low from the bottom up (meaning list the lowest cards that are either in your hand or the board first. Then when you have five cards the low is actually valued from the top down meaning you list the values backwards from the highest card to the lowest.
Example, you have
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| Hole Cards |
And the board is showing
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| Flop | Turn | River |
Then reading first from the bottom up you have NO ace, a 2, 3 from the board, a 4 from your hand, NO five, a 6 from your hand, and a 7 from the board. Reading that backwards to get the actual low value would be "76432" and can be read as a five digit number where a lower number is better.
Let's look at some examples:
On the board:
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| Flop | Turn | River |
There is a low possible because there are three different cards that are eight or lower.
If you hold
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| Hole Cards |
then you do not qualify for a low because you can not form a hand of five different low cards with the two low cards in your hand and the three on the board. The two of clubs on the board has "counterfeited" your two of hearts.
If you hold
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| Hole Cards |
then your hand does qualify for low because the two low cards in your hand (Ace Three) can be combined with three low cards on the board (Two Five Eight) to form a hand that contains five different cards eight or lower.
