If you’re ready to join in the fun of online gambling and card game competitions, poker may be a great choice for you. However, you’ve got to learn to pick up the game quickly if you want to establish yourself as a good player in online and offline tournaments.
If you aren’t yet familiar with a standard deck of cards, pick one up and take a look through it. You’ll see four different designs – or “suits” – consisting of diamonds, hearts, clubs (3 leaves) and spades (1 leaf). Within each of these suits, you’ll find cards numbered 2-10, plus a jack, queen, king and ace in each design. As with many other card games, the key to playing poker is to come up with certain combinations of these cards in order to score points.
The exact rules of all the different types of poker change slightly, but in most cases, the card combinations – or “hands” – you want to come up with are the same. The following are some of the highest scoring hands you can get during a poker game:
Simple Straight – Also known simply as a “straight”, this hand involves five cards of any suit that occur in sequence. For example, you could have a two of clubs, a three of diamonds, a four of spades, a five of diamonds and a six of hearts. Although this is a good hand, it’s beat out by many other more desirable hands.
Three or Four of a Kind – These hands are pretty straightforward – you’ve either received three or four cards bearing the same denomination, such as a five of diamonds, a five of hearts, a five of spades and possibly a five of clubs.
Full House – A full house is another solid poker hand to hold that typically beats out three of a kind. In this hand, you’ve got two cards of one denomination and three of another – for example, twos of spades and clubs and threes of clubs, diamonds and hearts. Eventually, as you learn to play poker better, you’ll find that this isn’t an uncommon hand to receive.
Straight Flush – A straight flush is the second best hand you can receive in poker, short of a royal flush, which we’ll discuss next. In a straight flush, you’ve received five cards of the same suit, with numbers in a sequential order. As an example of this hand, you might hold a five, six, seven, eight and nine of diamonds. This is a very strong hand to receive, and you should be able to win most hands with a straight flush.
Royal Flush – As mentioned previously, a royal flush is the best hand you can be dealt in a game of poker. In this hand, you hold the ten, jack, queen, king and ace of the same suit – any other sequence of numbers is considered a straight flush, not a royal flush. It’s pretty much impossible to beat this hand once you learn to play poker.
Outside of the different hands you can score with, you’ll need to know the specific rules of the type of poker you plan to play. In Texas Hold’em Poker, for example, there are four rounds of betting play, with each player receiving two private cards and the whole group being dealt five community cards to use. Five Card Draw – another popular poker variation – involves an initial ante, preceded by two betting rounds. Each player is dealt five cards face down and can draw and discard up to five cards after the initial betting round. Before you start to play any poker game, make sure you familiarize yourself with the exact rules of that variation.