The term Poker actually covers a whole family of poker games, including Draw Poker, Stud Poker, Omaha and of course the most popular of all Texas Hold ‘em.
While the rules, strategies and gameplay differ for each version, the basic premise of each is the same – you want to end each round with the best scoring poker hand, or be the only one left in the pot by causing all the other players to fold.
If words like hand, pot and fold aren’t familiar to you then don’t worry. Poker has it’s own jargon but you’ll pick up the basics very quickly, and you can refer to the glossary pages on this site to look up any words you don’t understand!
Poker basics
A game of poker is played with at least 2 players, and as many as 12 (though some variations such as 7 card stud have a lower maximum number of players, due to the number of cards in a deck!)
A poker game is split into many hands (rounds), with each player being dealt a number of cards (and in some variations a number of community cards also being dealt) and the players bet based on the strength of their hands.
Bets are placed into a pot, and the winner of the hand takes the contents of the pot at the end of the round. The winner is the player with the highest scoring hand at the showdown at the end of the hand, but if all other players fold (i.e. pass rather than match a bet) then that player wins the pot by default (and without having to show the strength of their hand!)
The aim of course is to win as much money as possible during the game, which can be either winning lots of small pots, or one or two very big pots, but normally a mixture of the two, while also avoiding losing too much to other players.
If all that sounds rather confusing don’t worry, it’s much easier to understand when you see the game in action, and most people pick up the basics very quickly. The rest of this tutorial series will take you through all the basics you need to know, so you can sit at a table (or online) and start playing poker with a reasonable idea of what’s going on, how to play, and hopefully how to win!
