Knowing Your Poker
At most online casinos, you can indulge yourself in a range of games, including Blackjack, roulette, and poker. So do you know how to play poker? Or where it came from? Poker is one of those gambling games that have lot of history behind it.
Poker is one of the world’s most popular games and is played by professional and amateurs alike at home and in casinos. Traditionally, it was played in card houses and gambling joints. Today, it is played a lot on the Internet.
Poker involves strategy, bluffing and a little luck. It is a game in which players bet that they are holding the highest hand. Another interesting feature of poker is that players play each other and not the house, in a game.
The name ‘Poker’ by itself has no antecedents. There are poker myths that speak of author Jonathan H Green coining the word after watching a card game. Today, millions of people all over the game play the game, and millions of dollars are bet in the process.
Believed to have originated in Asia, poker became popular in the US during the 1830s in the southern states. One school of thought says the game originated as a Persian card game called As Nas, as there are numerous similarities between the two. However, As Nas was played with 25 cards with 5 different suits.
The modern version of the game is believed to have originated in New Orleans. The game spread to all other parts of the US via the railroad. The frontier towns of the Wild West were a natural breeding ground for the game and it attracted travelers and speculators alike.
It those early days, the game was played by people of dubious distinction, either for entertainment or purely for the purpose of making money. The game appealed to the risk-taking traits of the early inhabitants of the West. Fortunes were often made or lost during card games in the early days, and ever so often, lives were lost when card games went wrong.
Those days of card sharks and shoot-outs have gone by and poker has progressed to become a game played by people from all walks of life. Today, it is a game that is also played purely for fun and loved by everyone including children and elderly people. There are professionals as well as amateurs involved in the game today. In fact, there are professional poker players who are stars in their own right.
About the game, although there are many variations to the game and strategies differ from game to game, the order of the winning cards remains the same. A large number of the game’s variation’s are played with the 52 card deck. The cards are ranked according to the number on the face of the card, in the following order: ace, king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.
In spite of being the highest ranking card, the ace can also substitute for the lowest ranking card. In some games, a wild card is declared and this card can substitute for any of the other cards. The numbers and faces of the cards are again differentiated as clubs, diamond, spades and hearts.
With all this information, including background and basics, you would have realized that poker is indeed a fascinating game, and that it only takes a little of your time to learn the basics. But that will be enough for you to start playing the game. Take a little time off to discover poker and get hooked for life.