Today is International slot gacor History Day here at loveandcasinowar.com.

CJ over at Up For slot gacor 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.