Poker
Poker is any of many card games where players place their bets over which hand lies with them, as determined by the rules of the game. There are three main types of poker: holdem poker, online poker and Omaha poker. In holdem poker, there are seven or more players involved in a face to face game. It is simple and easily understood, but often one of the most addictive games.
The pot, or initial amount of money, in holdem poker is set before the start of each round of betting. The last person with the most cards after the betting round is the winner of the pot. If you are playing for money, you get four cards dealt from the pot; if you’re playing for chips, you get one card from the pot plus the three you started with. That is your starting hand. If you have an even chip count, you are one of the eight people with the highest hand, called the odd chip count.
A lowball is another way of playing poker that differs from holdem. When you play lowball, you are playing against the house. The goal of the lowball player is to make it so that he or she is the last man standing when the pot is dealt out. A lowball player has an advantage over a holdem player because his hand may not be the strongest, but it will be strong enough to beat out the other five players in the pot.
Draw Poker is the most popular style of poker played in tournaments. Draw Poker is basically seven-card stud. All stud games have the same general rules as holdem; the highest player takes the middle position, the second player takes the flop, the third player takes the turn, the fourth player goes after the seventh-most player in the pot and so on.
Draw Poker is played using the same betting structures as holdem, but with the exception of the betting minimum. Because Draw Poker has an ante, the player always has the option of calling, raising or throwing out, depending on the pre-flop raise or bet. The betting structures for Draw Poker are quite different than the ante structures used in Holdem. In Draw Poker, there is no pre-flop raising allowed, but there are certain betting structures that are permissible, depending on the final table position and whether the final card is a “king” or a “flush”.
Another way to describe Poker is “chance”, and indeed Poker does depend a great deal on chance. If the player has a better hand than his opponents, he may be able to act first. If this happens, the player with the best hand gets to act first. If no player can act first, the player with the “low card” (or the player with the lowest amount of chips) is forced to act. If no player can act first, the scenario is repeated. In Holdem and Draw Poker, the player with the lowest amount of chips in the pot is the “low card”, while in Poker, the low card in a lowcard situation may be any card, not necessarily a “king”.
