1. How To Play Poker
2. How To Start Online Poker
3. How Does Poker Work

Each poker hand is made up of a number of betting rounds. The number of betting rounds depends on the poker variation. In Texas Holdem there are four betting rounds. In Seven Card Stud there are five and in Five Card Draw there are just two betting rounds. Through online websites, it is much more convenient and easy to have a poker game at your home. You don’t have to go anywhere to have a poker game. You can simply arrange a poker game with your friends while sitting at home. You can comfortably have access to all the online poker gaming fun with websites like Bandar Judi Bola.

1. Online poker is offered on certain platforms, which is why it is important for you to choose a site where you will set up your account. More often than not, different sites offer various gambling channels including bingo games, online slot games, sports betting, and judi bola or soccer gambling. The site you end up playing at is greatly more significant compared to your bankroll or the login credentials you.
2. How Online Poker Bonuses Work. Visit the poker bonuses section for information on the best new player sign up bonuses. This guide aims to inform you about how online poker bonuses work and the best ways in which you can clear them. Poker room bonuses basics. The majority of poker sites offer incentives for new players to join their room.
3. Online poker networks are essentially groups of sites which all share the same software. This software is typically provided by a third party developer, who also manages the network. Each site on a network will customize the look of the software to match their own brand, but the software will work in exactly the same way at all of the sites.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been writing a series of ““what is gambling” posts. The point of these posts is to identify what is essential to gambling in general and specific to gambling activities.

This post answers the question, what is poker? What makes a poker game different from a slot machine game or a blackjack game, in other words.

I’ll start by explaining some of the characteristics of a poker game that are most essential to the activity. Then I’ll provide more information about poker games and how they work so that you’ll be able to catch on and play in almost any poker game you’re presented with.

But there’s more to poker than just the cards you use.

The other important aspect of poker is betting. Poker games are played over a series of betting rounds, during which you put money into the pot. Players compete for the money in the pot based on the strength of their poker hands.

In all poker games, you have similar options when it comes to betting. I’ll cover those in the appropriate section below, too.

Most poker games also use the standard ranking of poker hands for determining who wins a pot at the showdown.

Playing cards in a standard deck of cards have 2 main attributes:

• A suit
• A ranking

There are 4 suits and 13 rankings. The suits are clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades.

The 13 rankings are the ace, which is a 1 that also counts as high. Then you have the numbers 2 through 10. Finally, you have a jack, queen, and king in each suit.

When you combine cards into a 5-card hand, those hands can fall into certain categories based on their ranks and suits. These categories are called the standard ranking of poker hands, and most of us learn these rankings as kids:

• Royal flush – This is a straight flush consisting of the 10, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit. It’s the best possible hand in poker. Notice that the cards are of consecutive rankings, and they’re also all of the same suit.
• Straight flush – A straight flush is a hand where the cards are in consecutive ranking order and also all the same suit. A royal flush is just the highest possible straight flush you can get, so these are really the same hand.
• 4 of a kind – This is a hand where you have all 4 cards of a specific ranking. The 5th card can be anything. The higher the ranking of the cards in the 4 of a kind, the better.
• Full house – This is a hand where you have 3 cards of one ranking, while the other 2 cards are of another ranking.
• Flush – This is a hand where all 5 cards are of the same suit, but they’re not consecutive.
• Straight – This is a hand where all 5 cards are in consecutive order, ranking-wise, but they’re not of the same suit.
• 3 of a kind – This is a hand where you have 3 cards of the same ranking. The other 2 cards are different.
• 2 pair – This is 2 cards of one ranking, 2 cards of another ranking, and a 5th card of one more ranking.
• A pair – This is 2 cards of one ranking with 3 other cards of different rankings.
• High card – If no one’s hand fits any of these categories, the player with the highest card in his hand wins.

In almost all instances, if there’s a tie, hand-ranking-wise, the higher version of that hand wins.

For example, if I had a straight flush where my highest card were a jack, and you had a straight flush where your highest card were a queen, you’d win—you’d have the higher version of that hand.

Here’s another example:

If you have a pair of kings, and I also have a pair of kings, we would compare the next highest card in our hand to determine the winner. That extra card is often called “the kicker.”

Bets and Betting in Poker

I’ve seen poker writers insist that betting is what defines poker more than cards or card rankings. This is true, too. Without betting, you’d have no game.

One of the most important bets in poker is the “forced bet.” This is either an ante or a blind, and it’s the reason everyone gets involved in hands. If there were no forced bets, players would just fold until they had a great hand.

An ante is a forced bet that every player must make on every hand.

A blind is a forced bet that every player must make when it’s his turn to make it. In most games with blinds, there’s a small blind and a big blind, and whose turn it is to post the blind rotates around the table along with the dealer position.

In both those cases, the stakes of the game determine the size of the forced bet.

Betting is another common betting action. This means you put money into the pot, and if the other players want to contest the pot at the showdown, they must at least call your bet.

Calling a bet just means matching the amount of money that an earlier player wagered on a hand.

You can also raise a bet. This means you’re going to match the size of the bet but increase the size of it. In most poker games, if you’re going to raise, you must raise at least the same amount as the initial bet.

A check-raise is a move that some old-school players find rude, but it’s effective. You check when it’s your turn to act, but when someone behind you bets, you raise the size of your bet when the action comes back to you. In some neighborhood games, checking is not allowed.

Anyone who’s read anything about poker knows that some tactics are quintessential to the game. This includes bluffing and reading your opponents.

Bluffing is when you make a bet just in hopes of getting your opponents to all fold. If everyone else has folded after you bet, you get to win the pot without exposing your hand to the other players.

Bluffing is most effective when you’re dealing with 1 or 2 opponents. The more opponents who need to fold, the less likely you are to succeed in your bluff.

You have 2 ways to win a semi-bluff:

• 1. You can win the pot when everyone folds.
• 2. You can win the pot when your hand improves to where it’s better than all your opponents’ hands.

Reading the other players is the other quintessential poker skill. Deception is a big part of the game. You want your opponents to fold when they have better cards than you, and you want them to call your bets when you have better cards than they do.

But you don’t know what cards they’re holding, and vice-versa.

Some of this is just guesswork, but some of it is psychology, too. Observing your opponents’ general tendencies is a start when you’re learning to read opponents. Does this guy fold a lot? Does this woman raise with nothing a lot?

How likely is it that he’s bluffing? What cards might he be holding when he’s making that action from that position?

This can and should inform your poker decisions. In fact, it’s so important that David Sklansky calls it the Fundamental Theorem of Poker:

Any time your opponent acts differently from how he would if he could see your cards, you gain. Any time you act differently from how you would act if you could see his cards, you lose.

Of course, there are lots of different poker games you can play, both at a casino and in a home game. These variations can be categorized, too, according to the rules for how each game is played.

Draw poker is one of the most common forms of poker that new players learn how to play. You start with a hand, then you get to discard and replace cards.

Stud poker is the opposite of draw poker. You get a hand, and that’s the hand you play. The betting rounds take place between the deal of each card.

Community card poker is poker where you share cards with your opponents. You have some cards of your own, too. Texas holdem is the most popular poker game in the United States these days, and it’s the primary example of this kind of poker.

Now I’ll take a closer look at each of these types of poker games:

Draw Poker Games and How They Work

The most common poker game among children and in this category is 5-card draw. It’s as straightforward and as simple a poker game as you could ask for.

Everyone posts an ante, a forced bet, which is usually a small amount.

The dealer gives everyone a 5-card hand. You get to look at your cards, but your opponents don’t.

There’s a round of betting after this.

The players who are still involved in the hand—who haven’t folded—get to discard cards from their hand and get replacements.
Once they have their final hand, there’s a final betting round.

At the showdown—if there is one—the player with the highest ranking poker hand wins the pot.

But in many 5-card draw poker games, you must have at least a pair of jacks before being allowed to bet.

And in some of those games, you need at least 3 of a kind to win. In this variation, there are often no winners. When that happens, the pot stays on the table, everyone antes again, and everyone has a chance to play at the new, bigger pot.

There are more variations of 5-card draw than you can imagine, but my favorite is called “spit in the ocean.” In this version of the game, you get 4 cards, and so do your opponents. You all share a single community card. Other than that, the action works just like it does in regular 5-card draw.

The community card isn’t revealed until after the first betting and drawing round.

5-card stud and 7-card stud are the most common stud poker variations. In these versions of the game, you don’t get to discard and draw new cards. And some of your cards are dealt face-up, so you have some information about what your opponents are holding.

Most stud poker games also use an ante system, and you start with one face-down card in either version. In 5-card stud, you get 2 cards, one of which is face up. In 7-card stud, you get an extra face-down card, so you start with 3 cards.

Then there’s a betting round between the exposure of each additional card. You bet, the betting action is resolved, then you get another card.

The last card—the 7th card in 7 card stud, and the 5th card in 5-card stud, is traditionally dealt face down. (We used to call it “down and dirty.”)

There are even more variations of stud poker than there are of draw poker. One of the most common variations is to play high-low. You get to split half the pot if you have the best qualifying low hand.

When playing high-low, you can create 2 hands—one to win the high pot and the other to win the low pot.

High-low is almost always played 8-or-better when playing stud. This means that to qualify for low, a hand must have no cards in it ranked 9 or higher.

To determine which hand qualifies as low, you just list the cards in descending order and treat it as a 5-digit number. So the best possible hand is 5432A. The worst possible qualifying hand is 87654.

If you have 87653 and your opponent has 87652, your opponent wins, because 87652 is lower than 87653.

Straights and flushes don’t count against you when you’re determining the low hand, either.

Other variations of 7-card stud include wild cards, and some have lots of extra rules. My favorite variation of 7-card stud is baseball.

In baseball, 3s and 9s are wild, and 4s get an extra card. (There are 3 strikes before you’re out, and the game has 9 innings before it’s over. 4 balls equates to a walk.)

The most commonly played version of poker in the United States these days is the community card game, of which Texas holdem is overwhelmingly the most popular version.

In a community card game, you get some cards in your hand, but you also have some cards in the middle of the table which serve as cards for your hand and your opponents’ hands.

In Texas holdem, you get 2 cards of your own, dealt face-down. These are your hole cards.

Then 5 cards are dealt face up in the center of the table. The action takes place in rounds:

• 1. You and your opponents get your hole cards and bet based on them.
• 2. The flop is dealt—these are the first 3 cards on the board. Then there’s another round of betting.
• 3. A 4th community card, the turn, is dealt. Then there’s another round of betting.
• 4. A 5th community card, the river is dealt. Then there’s a final round of betting.

When it’s time for the showdown, you make the best 5-card you hand from any combination of the cards in your hand and the cards on the board.

Omaha is similar to Texas holdem, but instead of getting 2 hole cards, you get 4 hole cards. And instead of using any combination of cards in the hole and on the board, you must use 2 cards in the hole and 3 cards from the board.

Omaha is more popular when played high-low, 8-or-better, just like stud 8 or better.

Pineapple poker is a midway point that’s often played in home poker games. You get 3 hole cards, but in most versions, you must discard one of the 3 cards. When you must choose your card to discard determines which version of pineapple you’re playing:

• Pineapple – You discard one of the 3 cards before anything else happens.
• Crazy pineapple – You discard one of the 3 cards after the flop.
• Lazy pineapple – You get to keep all 3 cards until the end of the hand.

Of course, there are all kinds of crazy community card games that get played in home poker games. My father-in-law used to really enjoy these—especially the ones where you had to buy a card.

Another Big Distinction to Make between Poker and Other Games

You’ll find games like Ultimate Holdem and Three Card Poker in casinos all over the world. These aren’t really poker games. They’re casino games that use the trappings of poker games to entice players.

That doesn’t make these bad games.

Video poker has more in common with solitaire than it does poker. Again, it’s just a game that uses poker trappings to attract players to a gambling machine.

How To Play Poker

Poker might hold a justifiable claim to being America’s real pastime. Apologies to baseball, but it’s true.
The main things that make a poker game what it is are betting, poker hand rankings, and playing against the other players at the table.

If you have an understanding of draw poker, stud poker, and community card poker, the rest is details.

What kind of poker experience do you have, and how might it change in the future after reading this post?

The software a poker site uses will have a significant impact
on your overall playing experience. In fact, many seasoned
online players would say that the software is the single most
important aspect of a site. It’s certainly something that we
look at very closely when we’re ranking poker sites and it’s a
critical component of how they actually work.

Most players are probably not too concerned about the inner
workings of poker sites and the software they use. If everything
works as it should and they have a good experience, then they’re
satisfied because that’s what they truly care about. That’s a
perfectly reasonable view to have and it’s unnecessary to fully
understand how poker sites work to enjoy playing at them.

However, the basic mechanics of the software are relatively
straightforward, so there’s no harm in learning a little more
about them. We provide a simple explanation of how it all works
below and we look at the various types of software that poker
sites use. We also provide some additional information on online
poker networks.

Basic Poker Site Software Mechanics

The software used by a poker site sits on a central server
and communicates with the computers (or other devices) of all
the players that are logged in to that site. It keeps track of
all the cash games and tournaments running and displays the
relevant details so players can see which games are available
for them to join.

When a player goes ahead and joins a game, the software
displays a graphical representation of the table on their
screen. All associated details will also be displayed, such as
who their opponents are followed by their chip counts. All
players should be seeing the same screen as their opponents,
until after their virtual cards have been dealt and displayed on
the screen, as then each player will only be able to see their
own cards. When community cards are dealt, in games such as
Texas Hold’em for example, they are displayed in the center of
the table for everyone to see.

Cards are dealt randomly, as if from a shuffled deck. The
randomness of these cards is assured by the use of random number
generators (RNGs), which are programs worked into the poker site
software. These programs are constantly producing random
sequences of numbers and the software converts one of these
sequences into a specific card every time a card needs to be
dealt.

It’s the RNGs used by poker sites which ensure games are
fair. There’s no discernible pattern to the order in which the
cards are dealt and the sites don’t influence the cards in any
way. RNGs are also used by online casinos to provide fair games
and we’ve explained how they work in more detail in our casino
section. You can read the relevant article here.

In addition to dealing the cards and displaying all the
action, the software used by poker sites effectively operates
the games. It prompts each player to act when it’s their turn,
usually by displaying a range of buttons to depict their
options.

The player must click on the relevant button to choose their
action and then that information will be sent back to the
server. The server then processes the action and updates the
game accordingly. If a player folds for example, the other
players will see that players cards be removed from the table.
If a player makes a bet, then the other players will see that
bet.

The software also keeps count of how many chips each player
has and how many chips are in the pot at any given time. It
determines who wins each hand, according to the rules of the
game, and distributes the relevant chips to the winners.

This is a fairly elementary explanation of what poker site
software does, but we hope it gives you a better idea of how it
all works.

Downloadable Software vs Instant Play & Mobile

The early poker sites all required you to download software
in order to play their games. This trend continued for several
years and it’s still the only option at many sites today.
However, nowadays many sites also have alternatives available as
well. A number of them offer software that can be accessed
directly through your web browser and some sites have even
developed applications that can be used from mobile devices.

Downloadable software still offers the best overall
experience in our view, for a few reasons, but the instant play
software and mobile software also have their own advantages.
Let’s take a look at each one of these options in more detail.

Downloadable Poker Software

This is still the number one choice for most poker players
and it’s available at the vast majority of sites. There are
several reasons for its continued popularity, including the
following.

• Higher Quality Graphics
• More Stability
• Better Functionality
• Additional Features
• More Games & Players

The graphics don’t necessarily affect the usability of a
poker site, but they do make a big difference to your overall
playing experience. It’s also worth noting that some players
play for long sessions and poor graphics can really hurt the
eyes after a while. High quality graphics are therefore very
important and the graphics are usually better in downloadable
software than in any of the other alternatives.

Stability is also vital for a good online poker experience.
Playing the game can be frustrating enough at times,
particularly during a run of bad luck, without the additional
frustration of software that keeps crashing or freezing. This
was especially a problem at the majority of sites during the
early days of online poker, but it’s a very rare problem with
the more advanced downloadable software used these days. It can
still be an issue with some of the instant play and mobile
software though.

Downloadable software tends to be noticeably more functional
and easier to use than the alternatives, which is obviously
appealing to players. It also usually has far more in the way of
additional features, and many players are used to having these
readily available to them. Special features such as player
notes, instant hand histories, customizable avatars and tables,
multi-tabling options, and even the chat rooms aren’t nearly as
widely available with the instant software and mobile
applications.

The final reason why downloadable software is still ahead of
the others is almost certain to affect the most players. The
selection of available games and the number of potential
opponents are both currently far more impressive than the
alternatives. This will probably change over time but for now
it’s a very good reason for why you should download the software
from poker sites.

Instant Play Software

An increasing number of sites offer this option and it’s
proving to be fairly popular. There’s nothing to download; you
simply log in to the site and access the software directly
through your web browser.

Instant play is a great option for those who might have
compatibility issues with a downloadable poker client. Some of
these clients are made to work specifically with Windows based
PCs, so those with alternative operating systems or other
devices (such as Apple Macs) may not be able to use them. You
won’t run into this problem with instant play software, as it’s
generally compatible with a wide range of operating systems and
devices and it’s typically powered by using Adobe Flash.

The instant play software used by poker sites is typically a
scaled down version of their download equivalent. There’ll
usually be less features, lower quality graphics, and there may
not be the same selection of games available. Overall, though,
it works in pretty much the same way.

Mobile Poker Apps

Mobile poker applications are now available from several
poker sites. Like the instant play option, they tend to be
scaled down versions of downloadable software with a smaller
selection of games. They are perfectly usable and are great for
when you want to play a quick game while out of the house. The
apps are generally compatible with a wide range of smart phones
and tablets.

How To Start Online Poker

Gambling and betting from mobile devices is becoming
increasingly popular and it’s something that looks set to expand
rapidly over the next few years. You can expect to see much
better quality poker apps developed in the future and many more
people subsequently start using them.

Online Poker Networks

Online poker networks are essentially groups of sites which
all share the same software. This software is typically provided
by a third party developer, who also manages the network. Each
site on a network will customize the look of the software to
match their own brand, but the software will work in exactly the
same way at all of the sites.

The idea of a network is that it increases what is known as
“player liquidity.” This term basically refers to the amount of
players at the tables. The way networks work is that players
from each of the sites on the network all have access to the
same games, which are all powered by the network software. This
generally results in far busier tables than at standalone sites,
where players are playing only against players from the same
site.

How Does Poker Work

We have a whole section dedicated to online poker networks on
GamblingSites.org. In this section, we explain in more detail
how they work and we also provide information on all the leading
networks and the sites that are associated with them.