Play Poker Online

Not more than decade ago, if somebody would have mentioned poker, you would have thought of it as a gambling game played in dark spooky corners by con men or criminals. But in recent times, poker has changed its image completely, and it has also ushered in a new frenzy for casino based games, both online and on-land. Poker is basically a group of card games which follow mostly the same ranking system for a hand of cards. Poker has gained so much popularity that now there are multiple poker championships played all over the world with huge prize money. A lot of these tournaments are televised and have a huge viewer ship.

History

Poker has a very muddled historical background. It is not very clear as to what are the origins of the game. Some believe that it is derived from a Persian game called As Nas, while others believe that poker is a descendent of a French game called Poque, which also involved bluffing.

Then there are those who believe that the unique betting features in poker have not been seen in any older game. They believe that poker originated around the Mississippi river in the 19th century and then spread to various parts of the country.

It also interesting to note, that the terms used in poker have been incorporated into modern English language, especially by the Americans. Terms and phrases such as Cliché, Ace up the Sleeve, Blue Chip, and Poker Face etc. are all derived from poker.

Rules

If you dont want to play pachinko online you will need to learn all about poker. Poker is a name given to not just a single game. It consists of a large number of games. Most of these games differ on a few standard things. The differences mainly come on account of how cards are dealt, which hand wins (the high hand or the low hand), and the limit on amount of betting and betting rounds. If you look at a tournament like The World Series of Poker, you will find that over 58 variants of the game are played. We’ll take a look at some basic rules, which are common to most poker games and discuss some popular variants.

Most of the poker games begin with a player making a forced bet. Every player follows the bet. Each player is betting on the premise that he has a better hand. After the first bet is made the betting proceeds in a clockwise direction and each player can either call -match the previous bet, raise – raise the bet, or fold – opting out of play, losing the amount he has bet so far. If the round reaches the first person with a raise, then he has to match it or fold. If it has reached him without a raise, he can opt to put money in the pot again, or decide not to, which is called a check. If there has been no raise since a particular player’s previous bet, then he can check.

The round ends if all but one player folds, in which case the remaining player wins the pot. If all the remaining players check on a bet, then there is a showdown and cards are revealed. The player with the best hand as per the poker variant being played wins the pot. In case there is a tie, the pot money is shared amongst the tied players.

Strategy and Bluffing

Bluffing is what makes poker so different from other card games, and to say that the primary strategy in poker is bluffing, is not far from the truth. If you don’t end up bluffing properly, it might end up being quite embarrassing for you. On the other hand, a bluff pulled off is highly rewarding.

A lot of things will help making a bluff successful. If there are fewer people remaining in the game, then that helps. If you are the last person to make a call, you’ll again have a certain edge. If your previous showdowns have had good cards and you haven’t been bluffing, then that puts a bit of a doubt in the mind of your opponent if you are going to bluff in the current game.

Variants

There are a lot of different families of poker which are very popular. We’ll discuss a few of them. Community-card Poker is one of the very popular families. Players are dealt incomplete hands with cards given face down in this family. Then the remaining cards are revealed on the table which can be used by any of the players to make a 5 card hand. Texas hold-em Poker belongs to community card family.

In Straight Poker, another popular variant, a complete hand of 5 cards is dealt to the players. Raising the bet and re-raising is allowed. This is the oldest of the poker families. Another family is the Draw Poker. In this, the players are dealt a complete hand of 5 cards face down. After that the players can discard their cards for new ones, in order to improve their hand rank. Five-card draw Poker is the most popular variation of this family.