Poker is a card game in which a number of players sit together and play for money. In poker, players place the bet on the value of the combination of the cards which they possess. Usually, a central pot is used for placing the bets. The value of the combination of the cards is used to determine the winner of the game.



The player with the highest value of the combination of the cards wins the game. However, another way of determining a winner also exists and in this, the player who remains in the hand after all the other players have folded wins the game. A hand ranking hierarchy exists which is used to determine the value of the combination of the cards.

Poker is an old game and it wasn't very famous in its early days. It was in the 1970 that poker started gaining popularity among people. World Series of Poker began in 1970 and since then, poker has gained a lot of popularity and it's now one of the most popular games that are played all around the world. However, the credit for the sudden increase in the popularity of poker goes to online poker. At the beginning of the 21st century, online poker was introduced. Online poker is the game of poker that is played over the Internet.

A lot of websites are available that offer online poker and since it's very easy to access websites, poker gained a lot of popularity in a very short span of time. Also, the hole-card camera was invented in the beginning of the 21st century. This resulted in the broadcasts of the poker tournaments and the game turned into a spectator sport. These days, a number of poker tournaments are played at regular intervals and a lot of money is involved in these tournaments. Poker players are now considered as celebrities.

That being said, there a number of variations of the poker which follow similar hand ranking hierarchy and the patter of play is also similar to some extent. Mainly, there are three families of the variants and I talk about each below.

Stud: Stud is the oldest poker family and in this, cards are carefully dealt in a prearranged combination of the face-down and the face-up rounds. Betting is carried out after each round. There are also a number of variants of the Stud and the 7-card Stud is the most popular variant of the Stud. In the 7-card Stud, two extra cards are provided to each player and they're then used to make the best possible 5-card hand.

Community: Community is another family of poker and it can be considered as a variant of the Stud. In this family of poker, all the players are privately dealt an incomplete hand and the face-down approach is used for it. A number of face-up community cards are then dealt to the center of the table. Each of the face-up community cards can be used by the players so as to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold-em and Omaha are some of the popular variants of the Community family of poker.

Draw: The third family of the variants of poker is Draw. In this, a face-down complete hand is dealt to each player and the bets are placed. After the betting, all the players are allowed to make an attempt to change their hand and this is done by discarding the unwanted cards. In the process of discarding the unwanted cards, the player is dealt new ones. Most of the video poker machines play Draw.