How to Play Dramaha

The rules in seven ideas

This is two games layered on one deal, and it helps to have met both: five-card draw for one half, Omaha for the other. The unusual part is that your five cards are doing both jobs at once, and improving one half can wreck the other.

1. One pot, two games. Half to the best five-card draw hand, half to the best Omaha high hand. Taking both is a scoop, and it is the reason anyone plays this game.

2. Five cards each, and a five-card board. You get a draw hand in front of you and a community board in the middle, exactly like Omaha.

3. Both halves are played for high. The version described here — the common one — is High/High: your best five-card high hand after the draw takes one half, and the best Omaha high hand takes the other. Other Dramaha variants change what the draw half is played for.

4. The draw half uses only your own five cards. The board is irrelevant to it. This is plain five-card draw, ranked the normal way — highest hand wins.

5. The Omaha half uses exactly two from your hand and exactly three from the board. The same rule as every Omaha game, and the same trap: your five cards contribute precisely two, however good the other three look.

6. There is one draw, and it happens at the flop — after that round of betting. You see the flop, the betting on it goes in, and then you draw. Which means you are choosing what to throw away already knowing how the board started and how it was bet.

7. Four betting rounds: pre-flop, flop, turn and river. The draw sits inside the flop round rather than adding one of its own.

Try it — how much of this hand plays?

How the betting works

Blinds, and four betting rounds — pre-flop, flop, turn and river, as in Omaha. The single draw happens at the flop, after that round of betting has gone in.

Frequently asked questions

Terms to know