There are so many options to play Poker. You can play at online casinos video poker games wherever you are or even organize poker at home inviting your friends and family. Or you can watch live poker games from WSOP. This shows there is no shortage of poker options to play and the only thing required is you should know how to play poker (obviously you should be knowing).
Poker Games You Will Love to Play
Here are the 10 Poker Games you will love to play at all times. These can be played at online casinos or even as house games.
1. Texas Holde’m Poker
Texas Holdem is the most popular poker game and the biggest one too as it changed online poker and the live poker world dramatically. Texas Hold’em has rich history, played in card rooms and back rooms from centuries.
It all started when Chris Moneymaker steamrolled an online poker buy-in into a World Series of Poker Main Event, people started to take notice and realize that Texas Hold’em was a game changer. Now, instead of each player dealing with his or her own cards, the fun of community cards made people realize that this was a whole new ball game.
How to play Texas Holde’m Poker?
The game begins with one player holding the dealer button and the two players to his or her left placing their blinds, a small blind and a big blind. This is a set value that two players must place with every hand. The dealer button moves clockwise so that the blinds move with it.
After the blinds have been placed, all players receive two cards each, face down. Players are invited to bet starting with the player to the left of the big blind. The bet much match the big blind or be greater than it, which would ultimately prompt players to match that bet.
Once the round of betting has concluded, three cards are dealt face up on the table. This round of dealing is called The Flop.
The goal of Texas Hold’em is to have the best 5-card hand using your hold cards, the two you’re dealt and the five community cards. At this point, you have 5 cards to deal with, so you could ultimately make a betting decision based on what you’re holding and what the community cards are.
With the flop on the table, players are invited to bet again. Players can also choose to check if no one else has bet. If a player has bet, other players may call or raise. Failing to do so means you bow out of the hand.
After all bets are complete, a Turn card is dealt. Again, another round of betting ensues, followed by a 5th card known as The River. With all five cards on the table, players are invited to bet again. After all bets are completed, remaining players turn over their cards to reveal what they have. The player with the best hand wins the pot.
2. Omaha Poker
Omaha looks like quite similar to Texas Hold’em , but there are some differences. Just as in Hold’em, it’s a community card game, with players sharing the cards on the board, but here unlike Hold’em, each player is dealt four hole or down cards, and must use exactly two cards from his/her hole cards and three from the board to make a five-card poker hand.
When you play online or attend a live poker tournament series like the World Series of Poker, you’ll notice that lot of the poker tournaments and cash games available are of the Omaha variety. Though not so popular as Texas Hold’em, Omaha if played is really a fun game.
3. Crazy Pineapple Poker
Pineapple poker is almost identical to Hold’em. In Pineapple Poker, instead of being dealt two hole cards as in Texas Hold’em, each player gets three hole cards to begin. Then there is a betting round. If you’re playing regular pineapple, every player now discards one of their three hole cards. So everyone now only has the regular two hole cards they would have in a Texas Hold’em game.
After the betting is complete, the flop is dealt, and another round of betting begins. In Crazy Pineapple, players have held onto to their three starting cards to this point. After the second round of betting is done, this is when players discard one of their three cards.
Having seen how the flop hits their hands, players can make far better decisions about which two cards to keep and which one to throw away. This makes for big hands, big pots, and big bad beats. The turn is dealt, a round of betting happens, the river is dealt, there is a final betting round, and if anyone is left then there’s a showdown. Players can use any combination of the two hole cards in their hands and the five board or community cards on the table to make the best hand, and the best hand wins the pot.
Pineapple, like Hold’em, can be played limit, pot-limit, or no-limit. No-limit is especially interesting as opposed to Hold’em, where if you get all in preflop you are a passive observer for the rest of the hand, in Pineapple, if all the money goes in preflop, there is still one more decision to be made that will affect the outcome of the hand.
4. Seven Card Stud Poker
Seven Card Stud Poker is a great game, and you can find it online and in the majority of casinos. The game can be played with two to eight players, and the major dissimilarity among seven-card stud and Texas hold’em is that seven-card stud does not make use of a flop, and in most instances, it does not contain community cards completely.
To start every hand a player is allocated the initial two cards face down then a third facing up. This is every so often called third street. The two face-down cards are known as the “hole cards” and the face-up card is known as the “door card.” Centered on these three cards, one would resolve whether or not to continue with the hand. Similar to any poker variant, starting-hand selection is very essential in seven-card stud.
Every player gets allocated a total of seven cards, of which three are allocated face down and four are allocated face up. Beginning with these seven cards the player has to decide on his best five-card blend. The hand positions are same to those in Texas Omaha; a royal flush is the best possible hand and the worst hand is the high card hand or the no pair.
5. Razz Poker
Razz poker is a variation of seven-card stud played only for low. In Razz, the highest up-card on third street is required to make a forced bet. This best starts the real action of the game, in every round of play after that, the lowest hand showing makes the first move.
If there are any ties for low or high hand showing, the first active player to the right of the dealer starts the round’s action. Another big difference between Razz and 7 Card Stud is if a player pairs the door card, there is no double bet chance like you find in a standard game of Stud.
As has been mentioned above, the lowest hand wins the pot at showdown. Aces count as low ,lower than 2 and flushes and straights are ignored for scoring purposes. The poker pros say that Razz is easily one of the most frustrating poker games to play, though it is worth spending time on, considering that you may need Razz skills during HORSE tournaments or ring games.
6. Double Flop Texas Holdem
Double Flop Hold’em is a rather unusual Texas Hold’em variation although the game structure is very similar to the original game. There are two community card sets in Double Flop Hold’em – two flops, two turns and two rivers. The pot is split between the first and the second flop. Each player receives two hole cards to use in their combinations. They may use their own cards with both community card sets to form two different hands.
Remember, in Double Flop Holdem the cards cannot be mixed. The players must play each pot individually and collect the best hand for each of the community card sets. This might even feel like playing two poker games simultaneously.
At the start of the game each player is dealt two face-down cards each and the compulsory bets are followed by two flops. When the first betting round is finished 2 turn cards are dealt on the table. After one more round of betting come the 2 rivers. At the end there should be ten face-up cards on the table in two sets of five. Each player makes their best hand for each set of community cards and the pot is split in half between the two best hands for each set. It is possible for one player to have both best hands and collect the whole pot.
7. Deuce-to-seven Triple Draw Poker
Deuce to seven triple draw, or 2-7 triple draw for short, is a popular variation of draw poker where the lowest hand wins. Some players also call deuce to seven low ball. 2-7 triple draw has gained popularity and as an alternative to Texas hold’em. It can be an extremely fun form of poker to play.
In 2-7 triple draw you use a dealer to determine the order of play. A player will be identified as the dealer by a white dealer button with the word ‘DEALER’ on it, or just a letter “D”, or something similar depending on where you play.
From there the person to the left of the dealer is the small blind and to their left is the big blind. Once each hand is completed the dealer button moves to the next player on the left, as do the small blind and big blind.
To make sure there’s action in every pot the blinds have to make a forced bet. The small blind is usually half the amount of the big blind and the big blind is determined by the table limits that you are playing at.
8. Jacks or Better Poker
Jacks or Better poker games is the most simple, and popular form of online video poker. Based on the Five-Card Draw game but adapted to both physical video gaming machines and online gaming, it begins with five cards dealt from a standard, virtual, 52 card deck. You will find this game in almost all online casinos where you can practice free or play for real money.
After examining the hand, the player can change one or more cards to try and move closer to a winning hand, or to increase the strength and payout of an already good hand. Jacks or Better takes its name from the fact that winning hands start at a pair of jacks – pairs below that will not trigger a payout.
The payout for a winning hand depends on the game operator, but a typical pay out chart will see a pair of jacks or higher pair pay out on a 1:1 basis, two pairs on a 2:1, three of a kind on 3:1 and so on, right up to the highest hand, a Royal Flush, which will typically pay out at around 800 times the game price.
9. High / Low Chicago
Chicago Poker is yet another variation of 7 Card Stud, but one that has its own unique twist. The rules, in terms of the deal and betting rounds are exactly the same as 7 Card Stud poker games. What makes this game a little unique is that a player with potentially the worst hand could be guaranteed half the pot, which is a little unusual.
As the stud game can be played for the highest hand or the lowest. In High Chicago, the player with the highest spade face-down wins half the pot. In Low Chicago, the player with the lowest spade face-down wins half the pot. The other half of the pot is won by the player with the best hand. If someone, however, has the best hand and the winning spade (high or low, depending on version), that player will win the entire pot. This game can be added to, and played simultaneously with, many other poker variations.
10. Follow the Queen
Follow the Queen is derived from Seven Card Stud and is dealt in the same manner, two down, four up and one down with betting rounds just like you would in stud. Players will ante in this game. Each player will first receive two cards face down and a betting round will begin.
The dealer will than start dealing each player one up card. If a player receives a Queen that player must pay double the ante into the pot and the card the player receives directly to his right will be wild and he will also pay double the ante for receiving a wild card.
A betting round will again take place followed by the dealer giving each player another card face up. Again if a player receives a Queen, he will pay double the pot and the player to his right will receive a card which will become the “new” wild card. The previous wild card is no longer considered wild.
During the last round the dealer will ask players if they want to receive their final card up or if they want to take it “down and dirty”. Since seven card stud is a game where you pretty much know what each player is holding, many players will choose down and dirty especially if it will help them extract the most amount of money from the pot if they hold the nuts.
Hand rankings are in the same order as a normal game of poker and because the game makes use of multiple wild cards, a natural hand will always win over the exact hand made with wild cards. Best hand in Follow the Queen is five of a kind. If by chance a queen is not dealt to a player in any of the up cards, than the game will be declared “No queen, No game” and players will ante again and start over until a queen is dealt.
With so much of poker games variants of which you can play online and some you can organize yourself at home you will just enjoy every bit of poker game. If you are looking to play poker games at online casinos then check out here for some awesome bonuses and coupons to grab for some great wins.