Celestial Poker Rules

The game is played with a standard 52-card deck with no jokers and no wild cards. Five or six players is ideal; up to nine may play, in which case discards will need to be reshuffled for the draw.

Every pot that reaches a showdown is split into two halves:

1.2(a) the draw half, won by the best five-card hand made from a player's own five cards only; and

1.2(b) the Omaha half, won by the best hand made from exactly two of the player's own cards and exactly three community cards, as in Omaha.

Both halves are decided by the standard hand rankings. One player may win both halves.

According to pagat.com, the game was first played in 2004 at the Sviten poker club in Stockholm under the name Sviten Special. The same game had been played in French Canada in the 1980s as Celestial Poker. It is also known as Drawmaha.

The game uses a dealer button and two blinds, as in Texas Hold'em: the player to the dealer's left posts the small blind and the next player posts the big blind.

The game is preferably played pot-limit, which was its original format. Players shall agree the blinds and betting structure before play.

The dealer deals five cards face down to each player, one at a time.

At the draw, each active player may discard any number of cards from none to all five and receives the same number of replacements from the deck.

If the deck runs out during the draw, the discards and folded cards are shuffled together and used to complete the replacements.

If all but one player folds at any point, the remaining player wins the whole pot without showing.

Each remaining player shows their five cards. The best draw hand wins one half of the pot and the best Omaha hand wins the other.

A tie within either half splits that half equally.