Poker Variants
The game of poker has many variations, most of them created in the United States in the mid-1900s. The standard order of play applies to most of these games, but to fully specify a poker game requires details about which hand values are used, the number of betting rounds, and exactly what cards are dealt and what other actions are taken between rounds. Any game may also use any betting structure.
They can be divided into the following groups:
- Draw poker: Games in which players are dealt a complete hand, hidden, and then improve it by replacing cards. The most common of these is Five-card draw.
- Stud poker: Games in which each player receives a combination of face-up cards and face-down cards in multiple betting rounds. The most common of these are Seven-card stud and Five-card stud.
- Community card poker: Games in which each player's incomplete hidden hand is combined with shared face-up cards. The most common of these is Texas hold 'em and Omaha hold'em.
- Miscellaneous poker: Other games, or hybrids of the foregoing games.
It is not uncommon for players in home games to invent ad-hoc variants during a playing session. Such games rarely achieve the popularity of the well-known variants, for the good reason that the well-known variants have been selected for playability over many years. "Playability" varies with the players, though, so it is quite common for a single group of players with shared tastes to become accustomed to one of these variants. When joining an established group as a new player, it is important to fully understand the rules of any such game that they commonly play.
Rule Varations
There are many types of poker games. While poker was originally played with each player receiving five cards and only one betting round, it has expanded to include hundreds of variants. Currently, the most popular one is Texas Hold'em, but other variants are very popular.
Here are some common rule variations:
1. High-low split: the highest and lowest hands split the pot. Generally there is a qualifier for the low hand. For example, the low hand must have 5 cards with ranks of 8 or less. In most high-low games the usual rank of poker hands is observed, so that an unsuited broken straight (7-5-4-3-2) wins low (see Morehead, Official Rules of Card Games). In a variant, based on Lowball, where only the low hand wins, a straight or a flush does not matter for a low hand. So the best low hand is 5-4-3-2-A, suited or not.
2. Players can pass cards to each other. An example of this would be Anaconda.
3. 'Kill game'. When a fixed limit game is played and a player wins two pots in a row, the stakes are doubled.
4. Wild cards are added. This can range from simply making deuces wild to the wild 7-stud variant of baseball.
5. A twist round in which players can buy another card from the deck. If a player does not like their card, they can purchase another one by adding money to the pot. This is sometimes called a "Tittle."
6. A stripped deck may be used. Poker was first played with only 20 cards. In the spirit of poker history, players will sometimes only play with a stripped deck. A popular poker game in Spain is played with cards 8-A. It is played similar to hold'em, except that one card is dealt at a time and you must use both of your hole cards.
7. Each player is dealt a certain amount of cards. Then there is usually a number of community cards that all players can use. When forming a poker hand a player may use cards from his hand and the "community cards". Examples of community card poker include Texas hold 'em and Omaha hold 'em