Poker Games

In live casinos, you will find a special area reserved for poker. On the Internet, poker is usually played in sites separate from online casinos, i.e. in online poker rooms.

Poker and blackjack are the two casino games where skill matters the most.

It can be intimidating for the beginner confronted with learning the rules of poker games, but this is not such a big deal. Like anything else, go step by step, and learn one bit at a time. Here we give a brief summary of all poker variations.

The main forms of poker (not video poker) are Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Stud, Draw Poker, plus so-called mixed games, and recently holdem has supplanted all other variations to become the undisputed leader. Draw was initially the common form of poker, until stud took over, then holdem, and some people believe that omaha will become number one at some point.

Draw is any poker variation where each player is dealt a complete hand before the first betting round, and then attempts to improve his hand by replacing, or "drawing" cards at later rounds. Sub-variations include the standard five-card draw, California lowball, Badugi, high/low split, double-draw and triple-draw.

Stud poker is any poker variation in which each player receives a mix of facedown and face-up cards dealt in multiple betting rounds. The most common sub-variants are Five-Card-Stud (The Cincinnati Kid) and Seven-Card Stud. There are many other forms of Stud poker. Razz is played in casino and in tournaments, including the WSOP; its object is to make the lowest possible hand.

Texas Holdem Poker is the most popular poker game in casinos and poker card rooms, both live and online. It is a community card game where each player may use any combination of the five community cards and his own two hole cards (only seen by him) to make a poker hand. The three forms of holdem are limit, pot-limit and no-limit.

Omaha is an extension of the concept of community card games. In Omaha, each player has four hole cards, and he must pick two of them in combination with the five cards from the board (community cards) to make his hands. This is like if he could choose among 12 pairs of hole cards in a Holdem game. Thus strong hands are very likely in a Omaha Game. There are a few forms of omaha, and the popular one is Pot-Limit Omaha.

Finally mixed games are poker games where a few poker variations are played together, changing variation after each hand. For example, H.O.R.S.E. stands for Holdem, Omaha 8-or-better, Razz, 7-card-Stud and 7-card-stud Eight or better. H.O.S.E. is a similar variant without the Razz component.

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