Omaha Poker History
When and where did Omaha join the poker games family and why is it called Omaha?
Omaha resembles another poker game, which uses the same rules but in which the player receives five cards instead of four. The history of Omaha poker begins in Detroit. It first appeared there in the early seventies and was called “Twice Three”. This game is widespread in big industrial cities of the Northwest and Midwest, especially in Chicago and New-York. The five-card form of Omaha has one drawback – the number of players is limited here to eight and nowadays it is replaced by a modern four-card form.
The four-card form of Omaha is widespread in the South and Northwest. Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado and Washington are especially active in this respect. In different places the game was disguised behind the names like “Fort Worth” in Dallas, “Oklahoma Two by Four” in Oklahoma City and “Nine Cards” in Seattle.
Omaha poker history began in Nevada in 1982. It was brought by Given, an eastern woman from Seattle also known as “Lady Dragon”, and Alabaman Robert Turner, a well-known star of poker tournaments. In the card halls of the Golden Nugget Casino the game instantly advanced in popularity. Since the beginning of the Star Dust poker tournaments in January 1983, playing high-limit Omaha became the by-effect of all poker tournaments in Nevada and nowadays it is always a part of them.
So Why Omaha Poker?
As we didn’t mention anything about playing this game in Omaha. The reason is as follows. A usual holdem was played in two forms: a popular Texas form, in which the player was allowed to use any five cards of the seven available, and the other more uncommon form, where he had to play the both cards from his hand.
It is this rare form which was named Omaha (For some reason or other it is called Greek holdem). Thereby the Nevadans had already used the word Omaha to indicate the two cards in the hand, which had to be produced at the showdown. When the game of four-card holdem had appeared in Las Vegas it was named Omaha poker to underline the circumstance that two cards exactly had to be used. As for gambling, Nevada makes the running for the whole nation and for the whole world. Now we have the final name for the four-card game of holdem family, which had so many local names in the seventies and early eighties.