How Many Omaha Starting Hands Are There?

Game	Hole cards	Starting hands, C(52,n)	Two-card combos per hand
Hold’em	2	1,326	1
Omaha	4	270,725	6

Standard four-card Omaha has exactly 270,725 possible starting hands — the number of distinct four-card combinations you can be dealt from a 52-card deck, written C(52,4). That is roughly 204 times the 1,326 two-card hands in Hold’em, and that gap explains most of what makes Omaha play the way it does: wider ranges, closer equities, and far more pots where two players both flop something real.

Where 270,725 comes from

The count is a plain combination — the number of ways to pick 4 cards from 52 when order does not matter:

C(52,4) = (52 × 51 × 50 × 49) / (4 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 270,725

Every one of those deals is a legal Omaha hand. The raw size is not something you ever use at the table, though. The number that actually matters is much smaller.

Six two-card hands in every hand

Because Omaha forces you to use exactly two of your four hole cards, each starting hand is really C(4,2) = six two-card hands at once. Take A♠ K♠ Q♥ J♥:

• A♠ K♠ and Q♥ J♥ — two suited pairings
• A♠ Q♥, A♠ J♥, K♠ Q♥, K♠ J♥ — four offsuit pairings

That is why coordinated hands connect with so many flops — you get six shots, not one. It is also why the two-card rule is absolute: you play exactly two of those six, never three or four. More combinations is not the same as more equity, though. Four scattered, unconnected cards also make six two-card hands, they are just six weak ones. The strong holdings are the ones whose six pieces reinforce each other — suited, connected, and paired without duplication.

How fast the count grows

Add hole cards and both numbers climb steeply, because C(52,n) grows faster than most people guess:

Variant	Hole cards	Starting hands	Two-card combos
Hold’em	2	1,326	1
4-card Omaha	4	270,725	6
5-card Omaha	5	2,598,960	10
6-card Omaha	6	20,358,520	15

The lesson is not the totals — nobody counts to twenty million mid-hand. It is that the number of ways to make a strong hand rises with every extra card, so the bar for “good” rises with it. A hand that is a clear raise in four-card Omaha can be a fold in a six-card game, because opponents now hold more combinations that beat it. Bigger starting spaces reward tighter, nut-focused selection, not looser play.

Turning the count into buckets

You cannot memorize 270,725 hands and you should not try. Winners collapse the space into a handful of groups:

1. Double-suited rundowns — connected cards in two suits, the premium tier.
2. Big pairs with connectors — aces or kings alongside two coordinating cards.
3. Single-suited and dangling hands — playable but weaker, and position-dependent.
4. Trash — disconnected, dominated combinations you fold.

A hand being “one of 270,725” does not make it playable; most of those combinations lose money. Where the good ones rank is laid out in our PLO starting hands guide and the seat-by-seat PLO preflop ranges, while the equity math behind the cutoffs lives on the odds and math hub. For how the winning five-card hands are read, see the Omaha hand rankings, or step back to the Omaha and PLO hub.