Poker

What is poker and how is it played?
Poker is one the popular variants of the family of card games. Here the players have fully or partially concealed set of cards. They than make wagers which are put in a central pot and the player who has the best combination of cards wins that pot,.The right to bet is determined by a token which is normally called a button or a buck. Formally in casinos the house dealer does this job in the form of a white plastic disk being rotated among the players as a symbolic representation of the order of betting. For each round one player has to make the initial bet normally called the forced bet and then the other players try to contest that stake. The dealer of that game shuffles the cards and then the cards are shared among the players. Between rounds, the players' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt. At the end of each round, all bets are gathered into the central pot. During every round the players are required to match their opponents bet or else they have to surrender there cards and forfeit there gains into the pot.if one player bets and no player is able to match that bet the particular round ends there itself and that particular player is awarded the pot with no further showing of cards. This method of winning a a pot without showing a card is called is called bluffing. If after several rounds the winner is still undecided the players go for a showdown where all the players show there cards and the player with the highest value of the cards wins the game.

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History of poker
The history and the origin of poker is a very debatable topic however it is normally considered that poker has its roots in the several primitive card games of Egypt and Persia .the Persians played an ancient card game called the ganifa which had 90 elaborate cards often made of thin paper just like the modern day cards. Primitive versions of poker also include the French game named “Poque” and a German game named “Pochen”. The Spanish also had a card game of there own called the “primero”. This game is considered as the mother of the modern day poker.
With the discovery of the new world and the emergence of French and English colonies led to the spread of poker in the American continent. A saloon with a Poker table could be found in just about every town from coast to coast. It was extremely popular during the Civil War when the soldiers of both armies played. European influence of poker ended when the joker was introduced as a wild card in 1875Further American developments followed, the wild card (around 1875)are the lowball and split-pot poker(1900), and community card poker games (around 1925). Poker’s popularity experienced an unprecedented growth during the initial years of twenty-first century, largely because of the introduction of online poker and the invention of the hole-card camera, which turned the game into a viewer ship sport. Viewers could now follow the action and drama of the game, and broadcasts of poker tournaments such as the world series of poker and the World Poker Tour brought in huge audiences . Because of the increasing coverage of poker events, poker pros became house hold names and enjoyed celebrity status like film stars with poker fans all over the world entered into expensive tournaments for the chance to play with them. This increased camera exposure brought a new dimension to the game as a whole.Major poker tournament fields have grown dramatically because of the growing popularity of online satellite-qualifier tournaments where the prize is an entry into a major tournament. The 2003 and 2004 WSOP champions, Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, respectively, won their seats to the main event by winning online satellites.

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Video poker
With the emergence of television and computers poker had a new avatar called the video poker. This game is played on a computerized console which has similar features as a slot machine .earliest versions of the poker machine appeared in1970s which had a television and a central processing unit. Throughout the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular in casinos, as people found the devices very interesting. Nowadays poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of all casinos.
You can start playing video poker by inserting money into the machine and then pressing deal button. The player is then given an opportunity to keep or discard one or more of the cards in exchange for a new card drawn from the same virtual deck, after which the machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout if the hand matches one of the winning hands in the posted pay schedule. The amount you win per hand depends on the style of machine you're playing, and on its pay table. 

Newer video poker machines also employ variants of the basic five-card draw. Typical variations include: Deuces Wild and NonwildEach machine has its own strategy. The strategy for Jacks or Better is different from that for Deuces Wild. And within each style of machine, each paytable can have its own strategy

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Online poker
video poker also has an equaally interesting online variant which can be played sitting at home using your personal computer. The following poker tournament sites provide information, articles, tips and strategies for playing in online poker tournaments, including listings of free rolls, information for the World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour, and more. 

www.pokerstars.com : a must for every poker enthusiast has all the new variants of poker to select from and play.all champion poker players are prodigies of this site.
www.partypoker.com : You will find a LOT of tournament action at Party Poker. They regularly hold a wide selection of multi-table tournaments (real money and/or play for fun). 
www.cardplayer.com : Card Player Magazine, the self-proclaimed "Poker Authority", is an excellent source for poker news reporting, articles, WSOP and WPT updates and information on the pro

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