The Basics of Poker

The fundamentals of poker are very simple. A full house is when you have three cards of the same rank and two cards of the opposite rank. A flush is when you have five cards of the same suit in any order. A straight is when you have 5 cards of the same rank in consecutive order in any suit. Pairs are when you have two pairs of same-ranked and unmatched card. The goal of every hand in poker is to make the most combinations possible.

The game of poker originated in Europe. The first game of poker was played with twenty cards. Nowadays, most games use a standard deck of 52. Earlier versions used smaller decks of cards. In countries with short packs of cards, players may use 32 or 40 cards. The deck of playing chips varies depending on the number of players. All games involve one or more rounds of betting. When a player makes a bet, he is considered to have “called” the card that is higher in value.

The game is almost always played with poker chips. If you have more than seven players, you should provide poker chips. Usually, the lowest-value chip is the white chip. The red chip is worth five whites and the blue chip is worth two, four, or five reds. In poker, players “buy in” by buying chips. Most of the time, each player buys into the game with the same amount of chips. You will usually need to buy a set of chips in order to play the game.