All about Poker

Among many popular card games around the world, Poker is definitely one of the favorite and most played card game worldwide. Poker was invented in America by card enthusiasts and immediately became popular in and around America, gaining popularity due to its rapid game play and requirement of skills. As the casino industry grew in the USA, Poker became more and more popular among professional gamblers and amateurs players alike.

Gameplay and Rules

Playing poker involves lots of skill, strategy and gambling, which is the basic component of popular card games everywhere. It usually involves risk taking and calling bluffs to confuse other opponents about the cards that you possess at that time. It can be played among four to five people and involves a dealer usually who is responsible for dealing out cards and monitoring bets. The game starts with the dealer distributing cards among the players in a clockwise direction. The first person to be dealt usually places a minimum bet which is specified earlier or a blind bet which can be anything above the minimum bet level allowed. Once cards are dealt, players call their bets according to their turns. There are usually many rounds of betting until all cards are distributed and the total amount of bet at the end of each round is gathered in the center known as the central pot. Players can call many types of actions during the game play, for example raise, check or fold. Bluffing is also an integral part of the game and a right bluff can result in large profits and less competition when all hands are dealt and the players need to show their cards to determine the winner.

After the betting procedure is complete, players who are still in the game and have not folded their cards need to show them to the dealer. The dealer then ranks each hand on the basis of poker hand rankings and whoever has the biggest hand wins the round and pockets the bet amount. Poker hand rankings differ from each variant of the game and a great hand in one type of poker can be completely useless in the other one.

Different types of Poker variants

As poker increased in popularity many variations were invented around the USA and United Kingdom. Some of the main variants of poker are given below

• Straight Poker- The authentic version of poker, it involves players being dealt five cards and betting once in a round. Raising and re-raising of bets is allowed and at the end of the dealing process, the player with the best hand according to the hand ranking wins.]
• Stud Poker- Players are dealt five cards which can either be face down or face up and then the usual betting round begins. Players can either make blind bets or normal bets.
• Draw Poker- In this type, players are dealt cards and the remaining ones are kept in the center. Players can then discard the cards which they don’t need and draw new ones from the deck in order to make the best possible deck.
• Texas Hold’em Poker- Players are dealt cards face down and remaining ones are put face up in the center of the table. The players then need to use these community cards to make the best five cards hand.

Poker is growing in popularity all around the world and even has online gaming modes through which players can take part in tournaments or play with friends. Many poker games for smart phones are also released every year.  Thus poker is surely not going to fade away anytime soon and will be popular for many years to come.