Play Community Card Poker

In today’s poker world, if you’re joining an online club or a land based tournament, the odds are pretty good that you will play community card poker. Community card variants of the poker game are the most popular versions around today, from big tournaments such as the World Series of Poker to the smaller and more informal kind that take place in houses all over the world. It’s a great way to have fun and also to compete with friends and strangers alike, because community card games are a mix of both luck and skill.

There are two main variants of community card poker that you’ll find, Texas Hold ‘em and Omaha. Of these, hold ‘em is that more popular choice for those wishing to play poker, and really only comes in one variation (although it can be argued that most other variations of community card poker stem from Texas hold ‘em). The other variation of community card poker is Omaha (or more properly, Omaha hold ‘em).

Community card variations of poker mean that players will have fun and be able to compete with each other in a poker game where the cards are literally on the table. It’s a bit easier to calculate odds in community poker games, which is likely why they enjoy more popularity than other variations.

In Texas hold ‘em, each player (from two to eight can play) are dealt two cards from the deck. These cards are not shown to anyone else and shielded in the players hand. There are bets placed in each round, and rounds are separated when community cards are dealt in the middle of the table. These cards are combined with the cards in the player’s hands (the two original cards are called hole cards) to make the best combination possible. There are five community cards in all, dealt first as a set of three and then one at a time. Any of the community cards can be used by the player in combination with their hole cards to make the best hand, so the final hand can’t be known until the last community card is dealt.

The other major form of community card poker is Omaha. In Omaha players are dealt four cards instead of two. As in Texas hold ‘em, there are five community cards placed and this follows the same sequence as well, but with one key difference: players MUST use three of the cards from the board and two from their hole cards to make the final hand, every time. This makes Omaha decidedly more complex than Texas hold ‘em, which may be one of the reasons it is not as popular.

There are also a couple of common variations of the Omaha community card game, in addition to house rules you might want to play for fun. The most common variations are know as High (The best hand wins) and High/Low (also known as Hi/Lo, High Low Split, or Omaha 8). In High/Low, the player with the best hand splits the pot with the player with the lowest hand, with 8 being the lowest number in the hand. You can see right away that players don’t have fun in learning Omaha the way they do in Texas hold ‘em.