Poquer Poker Blog » rules

Learning to Play Poker: 3

Lyndsie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:21:52 +0000

The next couple of rules are fairly well known by most people who have ever encountered the game of poker in any capacity, but a lot of folks still don’t quite understand the meaning of the terms. For instance, if you are the first player to bet by design or by the actions of your opponents, and you do choose to bet, you just opened — you opened the pot.

Checking can only occur when no player has opened the bet and you have to make the decision. When you check, you are basically saying that while you do not want to be the one to open the betting, you still want to play. Otherwise, you would have folded.

Matching an opponent’s bet is called seeing it. Naturally, a raise means you raise the bet.

Most of us know the actions defined these terms, we simply did not realize what all of those actions were called. Remember, you have to talk the talk and walk the walk in this game.

Learning to Play Poker: 2

Lyndsie — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:49:19 +0000

Now, naturally, learning to play poker — and play it well — depends on knowing the rules. We are not, fortunately, going to go through a whole, long dissertation on poker playing fundamentals, we are just going to take a short, summarized walk through.

For instance, a lot of poker variations begin with an ante, also known as a token bet. In some games, these are replaced by blinds. In either case, the point is to make sure that there is something in the pot for whomever wins the hand.

After the ante comes the deal. The finer aspects of the deal depend on the variation of the game being played. Sometimes there are community cards (Texas Hold ‘Em, et. al.), sometimes not. Sometimes the cards are face up, sometimes they are face down, sometimes there is a mixture.

Regardless, once the cards are dealt, the players take a look at their hands, and make a bet based on what they find. A round of betting follows. Depending on the game, the players may or may not have a chance to discard and get new cards.

More next week, so stay tuned — we’ll be getting to the meat soon!

Learning to Play Poker: 1

Lyndsie — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:26:03 +0000

With the recent spike in popularity surrounding poker, a lot of people are interested in learning to play. Part of this is due to the increasing popularity of the World Series of Poker, some is due to the emergence of a lot of televised poker tournaments and reality shows.

Some of these new fans are not quite sure how to play, though. It would take a whole lot of time to explain the rules of every single variation, but we are going to start out by explaining some of the basic fundamentals. The beginning of this series might as well be entitled Poker 4 Dummies, so pros, bear with us. Heck, I didn’t know a lot of this until I researched it!

Let’s start out with the cards. We know the suits, most of you also know that the Ace is always high, no matter what. So, what are the hands you are playing for in poker? The highest is the Royal Flush — very rare. The suit must be the same, and you are looking for 10 J Q K A. A straight flush has all cards in the same suit, there are no wrap arounds (i.e., no Q K A 2 3), but it does not have to be face cards.

Four of a kind is, well, four of a kind. A full house is one pair plus three of a kind. A flush and a straight are like the above, but do not have to be in the same suit. Three of a kind, two pairs, and one pair: pretty self explanatory.