Monday night, Warren calls and says that Ike would like to play. Great! We’ll have a full table of eight players:
- Mark DeVol
- Mary
- Ike
- Mark Huyser
- Paul
- Warren
- Bill
- Lyndon
Tuesday morning, Mary calls and says that she probably won’t be able to play because Frank is recovering from a procedure on his back. No problem. At least we’ll have seven players.
Seven o’clock rolls around, and Warren arrives. “No Ike,” he proclaims. “Don’t know where he is.” Hmm. We’re down to six.
Paul arrives, and moments later Mary walks through the door. Great! We’re back up to seven.
Lyndon arrives shortly thereafter, but as the hour approaches eight o’clock it’s apparent that Mark Huyser won’t be showing. (What’s new?) We’re back down to six.
Hey, where’s Bill? He’s usually pretty good about letting us know when he can’t make it. After several attempts to get through to him on his mobile phone, he finally answers. There’s loud music in the background. “I’m in Cancun! I told you last week!” Nobody recalls Bill saying anything about Cancun or about not being able to attend Cards tonight. We’ve got five players.
Five players again. And we were lucky Mary and Warren showed. WHAT’S GOING ON?
Paul called a variation on Omaha Hi-Lo that offered some pretty interesting situations. In this new version, the deal was the same, but players could use any combination of the four cards in their hands and the five cards on the board. You weren’t limited to using just two cards from your hand.
The “8-high or lower” rule was still in effect, but now there were many more ways to make your low. For example, if you had four low cards in your hand, you’d only need one low card on the board to make your low.
On the high end, any flop could potentially give a player a straight flush, four of a kind… anything. (For example, the flop is Q♥–7♣-2♠. A player with A♥–K♥–J♥–10♥ has a royal flush. A player with 7♦–7♠–7♥–3♦ has four 7s.) And that brings up another point: Whereas being dealt trips in regular Omaha is a horrible hand, getting them in this variation is terrific, because of all the full-house and four-of-a-kind potential.
However, it did take some getting used to, since we’ve been playing traditional Omaha for so long.
| Mark D | +$11.00 |
| Mary | +$2.00 |
| Paul | +$40.00 |
| Warren | ‑$71.00 |
| Lyndon | +$20.00 |
Card Night Blog 