The game of poker has been enjoyed for over a hundred years by men and women from around the world. The game is quite simple once you get the hang of the card values and different hands, though it is still not quite as simple as bingo. The game starts with cards being dealt and a round of betting pursues. The game starts with cards being dealt and a round of betting pursues. Each player has to determine whether his hand is more valuable than the other players and how much he is willing to bet on it. The poker hand values usually range from low to high cards where 2 is the lowest and ace the highest.
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The different hand combination consist of a total of five cards of the highest value. Hands are laid out from highest value as follows:
- Royal Flush: Straight flush from 10 to Ace.
- Straight Flush: Five cards in sequence, of the same suit.
- Four of a Kind: Four cards of the same rank, and one side card or ‘kicker’.
- Full House: Three cards of the same rank, and two cards of a different, matching rank, i.e three of a kind, coupled with a pair.
- Flush: Five cards of the same suit but not in sequence.
- Straight: Five cards in sequence of any suit.
- Three of a kind: Three cards of the same rank, and two unrelated side cards.
- Two pair: Two cards of a matching rank, another two cards of a different matching rank, and one side card.
- One pair: Two cards of a matching rank, and three unrelated side cards.
- High card: Any hand that does not qualify under a category listed above, the highest five cards will constitute the hand.
As mentioned earlier the card values range from low to high, for instance a pair of threes will beat a pair of twos. The value of the hands depend on the probability of a player getting that specific hand. Getting a pair is quite probable while the odds of getting a straight flush is one in about 300.
The different variations of poker have different sets of rules. In draw poker, players receive a full hand and try to better those hands by replacing cards during rounds of play. Stud poker consists of a combination of face up and face down cards being dealt, and then there is the ever popular community poker like Texas Holdem. Here the player is dealt an incomplete hand that is hidden. The best five card hand then has to be made with shared community cards that are dealt face up on the table.
Five card stud poker is very similar to seven card stud. However, instead of the initial two cards down, each player is dealt one face down and one face up. There are very few rooms that offer this variation, but Party Poker is one of them. The betting then continues after each round of card dispersment. However, after the fourth card round and betting, the fifth card is dealt face down with the final betting. If you are unfamiliar with this game, we recomment visiting Poker Stars to try playing it for free. You can find a whole database of rules and strategy for 5 card stud on Poker Rockets. We recommend visiting them first before gambling with your hard earned money.
With the technological era of the 21st century online poker real money has become very popular. Many poker sites offer the opportunity to play poker with real or fake money and have different rooms for varying difficulties and betting amounts. Playing poker online is a lot of fun and the fake money can be used to learn and improve your poker strategy and skills before taking on the big boys on the tables that uses actual currency.
Online poker sites like Pokerview have become very competitive to offer the users a quality service that will keep them coming back. Many also have special offers, discounts and lucky draws periodically to ensure their users play regularly to increase their chances of winning a special prize.
Many poker sites also incorporate other casino type games like roulette and blackjack to break the monotony. If you haven’t heard yet, Platinum Play casino online are one of the few free play online casinos, so if you want to try out any of their games you can get your feet wet without gambling real money.