Poker Hands

Poker, or folder as it is sometimes called, has been one of the most popular games in history. It originated in the early nineteenth century in France and has been popular ever since. Poker has been recognized as a game of chance, in that you cannot ‘know’ what your opponent will do and how much he/she will bluff (bluffing being the act of deceiving others in order to gain an advantage in the game; see baseball). Poker is any of a large number of card games where players bet over on which hand is the best based on the rules of that particular game.

Two types of poker games exist: Omaha, in which you build up slowly by making just one raise or two bets, and Texas Holdem, where you deal out a dealt pack of fifty cards immediately and attempt to make the highest hand (the strongest hand consisting of two cards, including the top card). In Holdem, each player has three cards to deal with, one for himself, one for his opponent, and lastly, one more card for the pot. Raising in Holdem means to ‘call’ (make the strongest poker hand) when you have only one card to your hand; calling in Omaha means to put together a five-card hand. Of course, in Texas Holdem you can raise before you call, but you must wait until your opponent has called before you can make a raise. Raising and calling are both legal in Omaha and Texas Holdem.

Texas Holdem and Omaha are fast action games where players make their moves quickly; and thus they end up getting into regular pot-sized fights over who has the stronger hands and so on. It is often considered to be the better game, though there is much room for variation. There are also a number of rules on when a player can legally stop playing. Some say that all players should stop at once, but this rule is rarely followed, since some players feel that they can still win if they use the time to carefully study their opponents’ hands and plan for future moves. Texas Holdem and Omaha rules differ somewhat from Holdem, in that in Holdem, all players are allowed to use the same betting strategies (even if the strategies do not work), while in Omaha only two types of betting are allowed, namely, the ‘all-in’ and the ‘continuation bet’ betting strategy.