Pot Limit Omaha shares some similarities with the more famous Texas Hold’em, but also has a lot of differences.

The most important thing to remember when playing Pot Limit Omaha is the Golden Rule of Omaha. That is, that you may only use two [and only two] of your four cards and with three [and only three] of the community board cards. The simple rule is 2 and 3.

Like Texas Holdem, Pot-Limit Omaha is played with a small and big blind. These are bets made before any of the cards are dealt and make up the initial pot. The small and big blinds are posted by the 2 players to the left of the dealer button and will move around the table in a clockwise fashion after each hand. The small blind is half the size of the big blind. In a Pot-Limit Omaha $1/$2 game, the small blind will be $1 and the big blind will be $2, for instance.

Once a dealer is assigned for the hand and the blinds have been posted, each player is dealt 4 cards from the deck face-down. These are known as your hole cards and two of them will be used to determine your best hand (along with 3 from the community card board) at the end of the hand.

The player sitting to the left of the big-blind then starts off the pre-flop betting round. With pot limit betting there is a minimum and a maximum betting amount, the minimum is the size of the big-blind. The maximum is the size of the current pot. Players may choose to fold their hand rather than call a bet.

In Pot Limit, a player can bet any amount from the minimum bet to the size of the pot. In a $5/$10 pot-limit game, the small blind is $5 and the big blind is $10. The first player can call the big blind (in this case, $10), or raise to any amount up to the size of the pot. A raise must either equal or exceed the previous bet or raise. In this case, a pot-sized raise would be $25 ($5 small blind + $10 big blind + $10 call), meaning that, in total, player three can bet up $35. Supposing player three makes a pot-sized raise, the total pot is now $50.

If the next player wants into the hand, they must call $35, which is the size of player three's bet. If they want to raise the maximum, they would bet $120, which equals the size of the pot ($50) plus a $70 raise ($35 call + $35 raise).

After betting is concluded for the pre-flop round, the flop is dealt. This is made up of the first 3 community cards which are dealt face-up in the middle of the table. All players will share the board cards, at the end of the hand using 3 of the 5 dealt along with 2 from their own hand to make the best poker hand.

The next betting round then begins with whichever player still active in the hand is to the left of the dealer position. Once again raises can be a minimum of the size of the big-blind and a maximum of the size of the pot.

There are 2 more community cards dealt, with a betting round after each one. The 4th card is known as the turn [or 4^th street] and the 5th card as the river [or 5^th street]. Once the betting round after the river is completed players must show down their hands. The winner being the player with the best poker hand using the Golden Rule of Omaha of 2 and 3.

Due to the size of betting increases from one round to the next it is possible that a player can run out of chips before the end of a Pot-Limit Omaha hand. When this happens that player is declared to be ALL-IN. At this point the pot to which the all-in player contributed is separated. Players who wish to continue betting will then form a second pot (called a ‘side pot’) in which the all-in player has no interest. At showdown the all-in player can only win the cash that is in the main pot.