Putting aside the images of the decades of western films in the US which almost always had a poker scene in a saloon, often accompanied by booze, brawls, cooperative looking women, and shootings, poker is much more fun and much less tense without the ready availability of a .45 at your side or that of your opponents. Those who play the game for a living may tell us what percentage of success in the game they believe is luck and what percentage is knowledge. For most of us who play penny-ante poker with friends as many of us do, online for small stakes, or with colleagues at conventions (as the author used to do), it is mostly luck, as the salubrious application of alcohol within that context first eliminates the effect of knowledge, then the intuition, and with that last quality, the luck usually vaporizes as well – meaning that drinking and playing are not advised if you want to continue that winning streak.
At an amateur level, the choices are often simple: 5-card draw, 5-card stud, 7-card stud and the infinite variants thereof (Indian, Queens and after or Follow the Queen, High Chicago, Low Chicago, Baseball, and so on) as one suspects professional gamblers don’t even admit that they know these parlour games, yet they show up in online casinos so somebody plays them. The increasing popularity of poker as a sport in the last 20 years has brought in the game of Texas Hold-em as a popular variation…and the online variations of this are many, to say the least.
The basics are simple. The best 5-card hand, out of however many cards are out there, wins, period. In 5-card games that is pretty easy (before you get to the wild card options). In 7-card games, you get to choose which 5 you use as your hand. Easy so far? Ah, the first question is often: “but what wins?” First how do the cards rank? The Ace is most often high, excepting those strange variants where it can be both; and when you can wrap a straight around – don’t ask. Really. The answer gets into those variants of 7-card, maybe 5-card too, but that isn’t in the author’s experience. The rest of the deck follows in declining order of rank: King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2.
The reverse order of winning hands is as follows:
High Card – where there is nothing else, usually an ace, but could be a King and the author advises the players to change the dealer if this is what they are dealing.
One pair – two of the same card, any suit; and rank counts as a pair of Aces will beat a pair of Queens;
Two pairs – any suit;
Three of a kind – any suit;
Straight – five cards in order, mixed suits fine; and if it is called, the straight can wrap around the ace, meaning “King, Ace, two, three, four” is a legitimate straight if it wraps around;
Flush – five cards of the same suit, any order;
Full House – Combination three of a kind and a pair;
Four of a Kind – All four of the same card;
Straight flush – Five consecutive cards of the same suit; and Royal straight flush – Ace to 10 of the same suit.
If two players have the same kind of hand, then the higher ranking combination wins, i.e., 3-Aces beats 3-7’s and a straight to the King beats a straight to the 8, for example. If you have identical hands, i.e., Jack pairs, then the highest ranking single card signifies the winner, as in an Ace. If both hands are identical, change dealers, suits are not used to break ties.
Okay, those are the very basics. The next series of pieces will talk about the various games as mentioned generically above. And we’ll talk about the “wild cards” in due course. It can get interesting.