Today is International Poker History Day here at loveandcasinowar.com.

CJ over at Up For Poker wrote an article about his recent Omaha experiences over the weekend. As an aside, he questions the origins of Omaha, and if there indeed was a Nebraska connection with the game.

I was curious about the topic myself, so did a little digging and found what sounds like a fairly consistent story. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with Nebraska, and it's still not clear to me how or when the game's name came to be "Omaha". This post from Alan Bostick to rec.gambling.poker from several years ago has the clearest summary I've seen:

From: Alan Bostick
Subject: Re: Does anyone know when 7cs/holdem/omaha were invented?
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Date: 1999/10/21

In article <7uhfvd$1qd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Wallace wrote:
> I'm trying to put together a timieline of poker history, starting about
> 1860 when draw and 5-stud were invented. I can find no indication in
> any book I have access to which gives an approximate date for the
> invention of 7cs, holdem or omaha. Has anyone got any information on
> those questions?

I can't answer about 7-stud or Texas hold'em.

But I've heard a clear, coherent story about the origin of Omaha from Tad Perry. (Damn, I wish he were still posting.)

There Tad says, was a particular home game in Seattle or vicinity in the late seventies or early eighties that was populated by otherwise good players who liked lots of action. It was a rammin' jammin' group and they liked rammin' jammin' games. Somewhere along the line they invented what they called "four-card hold'em", basically Texas hold'em played with four cards, you used exactly two to make a hand, etc. etc. Right. It was pretty close to what we recognize today as Omaha high.

Curtain rises at the Golden Nugget during the time of the WSOP in (if I'm remembering what Tad told me correctly) 1982. A bunch of players from this Seattle home game are in something like a $10-$20 hold'em game, and rammin' and jammin' and having a good ol' time, and because they're used to playing against each other in that sort of game and because the locals don't, eventually they win all the money, and keep playing. "Hey," says one of them, "can we play four-card hold'em?" "You can play whatever you want to," says the dealer, "as long as everyone at the table agrees." They all went for it, and started playing, and the game goes on for a while. Some locals sit down again, some get their clocks cleaned, others win a bit, and the game continues.

Eventually Bill Boyd comes over to the table to watch what's going. The game looks interesting to him, he sees that it's an action game, and that it seems to have legs. He decides to try to spread it again another night. But instead of calling it four-card hold'em ,he calls it "Omaha hold'em". The rest is history.

I can't vouch for the truth of this, but it has the ring of truth to me. (At this point, all the alt.folklore.urban veterans who post or lurk on r.g.p. join in a chorus of "MOTTO!") Tad told me he played regularly with some of the regulars in that old home game, even playing in the house where "four-card hold'em" was invented, so he says. There are probably enough hooks to the truth in this story that an enterprising researcher (i.e. one with more enterprise than me) could straighten it out where I've gotten it wrong, fill in the gaps, and so on.

Hope this helps.

-- Alan Bostick

Alan's story is mostly confirmed from this message from Tad Perry from mid-last year:

I've talked to Gwen about this before. She called it "9-card holdem" when introduced to Boyd, and she says what you say: he changed the name.

As RGP'ers know, in Vegas, they will deal you anything you want to play if you can describe it to them. (See "Chowaha.")

According to Gwen, the game was being played a lot in an underground Seattle game, and when a large group of players from that game descended on Vegas for the WSOP that year, they found 5 or 6 of themselves all at a holdem table at the Nugget. She says at one point only Seattle area players were seated (others were walking) and so they asked for "9-card Holdem" and Gwen taught the dealers how to deal it.

There were observers on the rail and a lot of interest. When the walkers returned they decided to try it. Gwen says she went to her room to sleep and when she came back, it already had been given the new name, and essentially became Boyd's "invention."

However, RGP is here to set the record straight.

tvp

The Poker Babe actually credits Robert "Chip Burner" Turner with taking the game to Bill Boyd on this page, but also says that at the Golden Nugget, where it started in Vegas, it was called "Nugget Holdem". This is corroborated by Robert Turner's interview over at Poker Plus:

RT: Probably the most memorable run that I had occurred at the Super Bowl of Poker at Caesars Palace. In the first four events, I had two firsts and two seconds back to back. But back to my job at the Nugget, in 1983 I asked Mr. Boyd to start spreading Omaha. I had been talking to a player from Seattle and told her than in the South, we played four-card poker. "I run a game in Washington," she answered, "and we play a lot of four-card poker there." So, Mr. Boyd cleared it with the Nevada Gaming Board and we started our first Omaha game four-handed at $5-$10 limits. Although everybody there knew how to play the game, it was slow and boring at those limits so we raised them to $10-$20. The game started around 2:00 that afternoon and by 6:30 that night we had changed it to pot-limit. For 30 days the game went around the clock without breaking up. The World Series had started at Binion's and a lot of players were crossing the street to the Nugget to play in our pot-limit Omaha game. When the Series was over, Mr. Boyd put Omaha on the regular schedule as a $2-$4 limit game, calling it "Nugget Hold'em." That game never broke up either -- when the Nugget's poker room closed, the game moved to the Horseshoe where it is still being played today at $4-$8 limits.

So it seems likely that the Golden Nugget was not responsible for the name change to "Omaha", but I'm not sure who is.

Ciaffone's book Omaha Holdem Poker: The Action Game apparently contains a few pages on the origins of Omaha, but I have not read it. If anybody has and would like to post what Ciaffone has to say, I'd appreciate it.

Fantastic. Thanks.

Posted by: Jake on April 27, 2004 12:09 AM

Omaha Holdem Poker by Bob Ciaffone says the following:

When and where did Omaha holdem enter the family of poker games, and why is it called Omaha? I will try to answer these questions as best I can. Omaha is ver similar to another poker game using the same rules, but giving each player five cards instead of four. In Detroit we used to call this game "Two-by-Three" when it was introduce in the early seventies. The game is played widely in the bigt industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest, Particularly Chicago and New York. This five-card form of Omaha suffers from the drawback of limiting the number of players to eight, and has been supplanted in most places by the modern four-card form.

The four-card form of Omaha is played widely throughout the South and Northwest. Particularly active statesfor Omaha are Tenessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Washington. The game has masqueraded under several different names in various localities, such as "Oklahoma Tow-by0four" in Oklahoma City, "Fort Worth" in Dallas, and "Nine-card" in Seattle.

Omaha first came to Nevada in the spring of 1982. It was introduced by Gwen, an Oriental woman from Seattle nicknamed 'The Dragon Lady," and an Alabaman Roibert Turner, the well-known poker tournament star. The game was an instant success at the Golden Nugget Casino's cardroom. Since the Stardust Poker Tournament in January of 1983, a high-stakes Omaha game has been spread daily as the featured side-action game at every Nevada poker tournament, and is always a tournament event.

So why the name Omaha when I have not even mentioned it being played in Omaha, Nebraska? Here is the reason. Regular holdem iswas actually played in two forms in Nevada: the popular Texas variety where a player uses any five of the seven cards available, and the rare form where he must play both cards in his hand. This rare form was called Omaha (and is currently called Greek holdem for some reason). Therefore, Nevadans already used the word Omaha to mean that both cards in the hand muyst be used at the showdown. When the game of four-card holdem was introduced, it was called Omaha in Las Vegas to emphasize the fact that precisely two cards in the hand were to be used. Nevada sets the fashion for the rest of the nation, and indeed the world, where gambling matters are concerned. So we finally have one international name, Omaha, to describe this four-card game of the holdem family that had acquired so many local names during the 70's and early 80's.

It would likely take the professional effforts of a folklorist or oral historian to track down the origins of Omaha. What I find peculiar is that the early versions of the game were widespread in the South and in Midwestern cities ... and Washington! How did "Nine-Card" get to Seattle? Did a lone southron bring it with him and introduce it to his local home game? Did the players in that home game invent it independently?

Michael Wiesenberg's Official Dictionary of Poker gives a definition of Omaha that is completely consistent with Ciaffone's account of how four-card hold'em came to be called Omaha: it specifies that exactly two cards from one's hand play with the board, while leaving open the number of cards that are in a player's hand.

Posted by: Alan Bostick on April 28, 2004 12:49 PM

Wow... you guys rock. Thanks for the research! Although I almost hoped there was a more romantic history behind the name.

Posted by: CJ on April 29, 2004 08:11 PM

I have a book about that poker that I picked up at half price. The original copyright was before 1950 but it was reprinted in like 1965.

In the book he mentions a game called "Hold Me Darling" which is Texas Hold'em. He was a professional poker player and yet the game was new to him. He really enjoyed the combination of skill and luck and predicted that it would be a popular game in the future. He then had an addendum in the later printing saying that it had, in fact, become a popular game sometimes called "hold 'em".

I should dig up that book to get more details. It has some great anecdotes.

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