How to Deal Omaha Poker: Dealer's Step Guide

Deal Omaha the same way you deal Texas Hold’em, with one change: each player gets four hole cards instead of two. The button, the blinds, the three burns, and the flop-turn-river order are all identical. If you can run a Hold’em table, the only new habit is counting to four on every pass.

Here is the procedure a dealer actually follows, from setup to showdown.

Setting the button and taking the blinds

Move the dealer button one seat clockwise from the last hand — this marks who acts last after the flop. The player immediately left of the button posts the small blind; the next seat left posts the big blind. Those two forced bets seed the pot. Shuffle thoroughly, offer the cut, and you are ready to deal.

The deal itself

Start with the small blind (the seat left of the button) and go clockwise, laying one card at a time, face down, to each player. Keep circling the table until everyone holds four cards; the button gets the last card of each pass. Do not slide four cards to one player at once — single-card rounds are standard casino procedure and make the deal hard to rig.

When the last card lands, pre-flop betting opens with the player to the left of the big blind, the seat known as under the gun.

Burning and boarding: flop, turn, river

Once pre-flop action closes, the community cards come out in three stages, and you burn one card before each stage.

Stage	Burn	To the board	After
Flop	1 face down	3 face up	Betting round
Turn	1 face down	1 face up	Betting round
River	1 face down	1 face up	Final betting, then showdown

That is three burns a hand — one each before the flop, turn, and river. Burning guards against a top card being marked or accidentally flashed during the deal.

Post-flop, action always starts with the first live player left of the button, and the button acts last. Because Omaha runs almost exclusively pot-limit, the biggest legal bet or raise is the current size of the pot — keep an eye on players who try to overbet.

Reading it out at showdown

If two or more players see the river through, the last aggressor shows first; if the river checked around, the first live seat left of the button shows first. Then read every hand as exactly two hole cards plus exactly three board cards — never one, never three. That constraint is the whole game, and it trips up beginners constantly: a player with a single spade staring at four spades on the board does not have a flush, because a flush needs two spades in hand. Confirm two-plus-three on every hand before you push the pot, and in Hi-Lo split it between the best high and the best qualifying low.

A dealt hand looks very different from the players’ chairs — walk through one from that side in how to play Omaha, or nail down the two-plus-three reading in the rules of Omaha. Brand new to the mechanics? The how poker is played primer covers the universal basics first.