Squid Game

It’s like Omaha High, except there are three boards and one gets eliminated

Four hole cards (as the sources describe it), the Omaha rule, and three flops, three turns and three rivers. After the rivers, the board with the lowest river card is taken out of play. One more betting round happens, then the pot is split between the best Omaha hands on the two surviving boards.

Rarity: low. It is a dealer’s-choice and home-game name. Our sources are Card Player Lifestyle’s rule list, an Upswing article, and a list of games called in a Lodge Poker Club dealer’s-choice video. Our research dossier treated it as the same core mechanic as Derailment, differently packaged: Squid Game uses ordinary blinds and a betting round after the elimination, while WSOP’s Derailment is a bomb pot.

30-second cheat sheet

• Omaha High: four hole cards, exactly two from your hand and three from a board.
• Three boards, each with flop, turn and river. Normal betting between streets.
• After the rivers, the board with the lowest river card is removed.
• There is one more betting round, with the two surviving boards known.
• Pot split in half: best hand on each surviving board. Win both, scoop.
• High only. There is no low half in any source.
• The Lodge calls it “Limit Squid Game”, so it has been spread as limit.

Full rules

Streets

Standard Omaha structure: blinds, four hole cards, pre-flop betting. Then three flops, betting; three turns, betting; three rivers, betting. The hole-card count isn’t stated explicitly in the sources (they say “Omaha Hi”); four is our reading. The sources do not describe burn procedure.

The elimination

After the three rivers, the board with the lowest river card is removed. Then the last betting round, then showdown. Ace is presumably high when comparing rivers. [INFERENCE: sources say “lowest” with no exception.]

Showdown

Under the Omaha rule, per surviving board: exactly two hole cards plus exactly three cards from that board. Boards can’t be combined; you may use different pairs per board [INFERENCE from the double-board rules]. Each surviving board takes half.

Rooms disagree

• Ties for lowest river. Card Player Lifestyle says that if two boards share the lowest river rank, both are eliminated and the one remaining board takes the whole pot. WSOP’s Derailment says “lowest card by suit”, which might mean a suit tie-break, but gives no order. This page leaves it unresolved. Ask the floor.
• If all three rivers are the same rank, Card Player Lifestyle says all boards are eliminated and the pot goes to the dealer. That appears in only one source and is odd, so don’t count on it.
• Structure. Card Player Lifestyle and Upswing imply blinds; The Lodge says limit; WSOP’s Derailment is ante-only with no pre-flop action.

Worked examples

No verified examples. The example evaluator cannot score multi-board games.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Chasing a scoop across all three boards. Only two get paid, and you don’t know which dies until the river.
• Having the nuts on the board that gets eliminated. Worth nothing.
• Forgetting the elimination comes before the final bet. The last bet is made knowing which boards survive.
• Mixing cards across boards.
• Assuming there’s a low half. There isn’t.

Lore and reputation

Upswing credits exposure to a Doug Polk video from The Lodge Poker Club in Texas, where players in a dealer’s-choice game could call any game for an orbit; a VIP-Grinders post about that video lists “Limit Squid Game”. Card Player Lifestyle lists it among variants for its Mixed Game Festivals, though it does not individually confirm it was played. The name is presumably borrowed from the Netflix series. [INFERENCE] No WSOP 2026 event ran it.