What are the basics of playing poker?

The lowest ranked hand is "high card", which is the direct value of the best card in your hand. The strength of the cards is as follows: cards from two to ten (2-10) according to the number written on them (the higher the better), the next in line is a jack (J), then a queen (Q), then a king (K) and the Ace (A) is the highest. It is worth noting that in such an "empty" hand, the highest card will never be a two, three, four, five or six, because if any of them seems to be the highest, we are dealing with a better combination of cards than we think.

The values on the cards are available in exactly four copies, but each of these cards has a different color - for example, in the deck there is one card with the number ten: ten of hearts, ten of diamonds, ten of clubs and ten of spades. Multiple-deck games may be an exception. In this case, each contains one copy of each of the cards, so you could have two eights of clubs in your hand, for example.

What are the hands of cards in poker?

For the sake of simplicity, the sets presented will be given without color, unless it is logically significant. More valuable hands start with a pair, which consists of two cards of the same value (e.g. 3 and 3). Two pairs (e.g. 2, 2, K and K) are stronger than this set, and three (Q, Q and Q) are even better. These are the most common combinations possible; in traditional poker games they usually decide the winner.

Stronger, more complicated hands start with a straight that contains five consecutive cards that increase by exactly one notch. Note that an ace can be the highest card in this case, but it can also be played as 1. Therefore, in this case the possible hands are: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, but also 6, 7, 8, 9 , 10, or preferably 10, J, Q, K, A. This is a hand that is easy to miss. Sometimes it comes up unexpectedly if you draw a perfectly matched middle card from a set (for example, in standard poker, with a hand of 3, 4, 6, 7, K will give up the king and draw 5).

The rarest, most worthy hands are flush (all cards of any value, but in one suit, for example diamonds), full, i.e. two and three (6, 6, 6, A, A), four (J, J , J, J), poker, i.e. a straight of one suit (2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - all hearts), and the highest and often invisible even by the most experienced players is the royal flush, which is a poker but starts with from ace (only 4 possible hands out of 2,598,960).

What about a tie in poker?

Ties are always determined by the value of the cards in the hand, so a pair 9, 9 will win against 3, 3 and a straight 8, 9, 10, J, Q is higher than A, 2, 3, 4, 5. In case the players have if you have an identical five-card hand, you have the only option to actually draw. If, on the other hand, the same set contains fewer cards, then the next "lonely" cards are checked, or rather their value. A good example is the seemingly similar hands: 3, 3, 8, 8, 2 and 3, 3, 8, 8, 4. In this case, the second set wins, because two pairs are compared first, and both are eights over three, but each player has a fifth card, which in this case is the so-called tie-breaker .

What is the most popular form of poker?

The most popular type of poker these days is Poker Texas Hold-em. It is distinguished from the standard version mainly by the fact that in the center of the table there are shared and face-up cards, from which each player can choose from three to five to two in their hand. Thanks to the possibility of creating a hand of five cards out of the available seven, high combinations are much more common, so straights and flushes are no longer a rarity.