Spring Poker. Summer Poker. Fall Poker. Winter Poker. Christmas Poker. Easter Poker. Halloween Poker.

Thanksgiving Poker. It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan.

The English game brag earlier bragg clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing though the concept was known in other games by that time.

It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now. A modern school of thought rejects these ancestries, [1] as they focus on the card play in poker, which is trivial and could have been derived from any number of games or made up on general cardplay principles.

It was played in a variety of forms, with 52 cards, and included both straight poker and stud. English actor Joseph Cowell [6] reported that the game was played in New Orleans in , with a deck of 20 cards, and four players betting on which player's hand was the most valuable.

Jonathan H. Zieber, Philadelphia, , described the spread of the game from there to the rest of the country by Mississippi riverboats , on which gambling was a common pastime.

As it spread north along the Mississippi River and to the West during the gold rush, it is thought to have become a part of the frontier pioneer ethos.

Soon after this spread, the full card French deck was used and the flush was introduced. The draw was added prior to when it was first mentioned in print in a handbook of games.

Further American developments followed, such as the wild card around , lowball and split-pot poker around , and community card poker games around Developments in the s led to poker becoming far more popular than it was before.

Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began, in By the s, poker was being depicted in popular culture as a commonplace recreational activity.

There are 10 different kinds of poker hands such as straight flush, four of a kind etc. Poker variations are played where a "high hand" or a "low hand" may be the best desired hand.

In other words, when playing a poker variant with "low poker" the best hand is one that contains the lowest cards and it can get further complicated by including or not including flushes and straights etc.

So while the "majority" of poker game variations are played "high hand", where the best high "straight, flush etc. To summarize, there can be variations that are "high poker", "low poker", and "high low split".

In the case of "high low split" the pot is divided among the best high hand and low hand. Poker has many variations , [2] [3] all following a similar pattern of play [4] and generally using the same hand ranking hierarchy.

There are four main families of variants, largely grouped by the protocol of card-dealing and betting:. There are several methods for defining the structure of betting during a hand of poker.

The three most common structures are known as "fixed-limit", "pot-limit", and "no-limit". In fixed-limit poker, betting and raising must be done by standardised amounts.

For instance, if the required bet is X, an initial bettor may only bet X; if a player wishes to raise a bet, they may only raise by X. In pot-limit poker, a player may bet or raise any amount up to the size of the pot.

When calculating the maximum raise allowed, all previous bets and calls, including the intending raiser's call, are first added to the pot.

The raiser may then raise the previous bet by the full amount of the pot. In no-limit poker, a player may wager their entire betting stack at any point that they are allowed to make a bet.

In all games, if a player does not have enough betting chips to fully match a bet, they may go "all-in", allowing them to show down their hand for the amount of chips they have remaining.

Other games that use poker hand rankings may likewise be referred to as poker. Video poker is a single-player video game that functions much like a slot machine ; most video poker machines play draw poker, where the player bets, a hand is dealt, and the player can discard and replace cards.

Payout is dependent on the hand resulting after the draw and the player's initial bet. Strip poker is a traditional poker variation where players remove clothing when they lose bets.

Since it depends only on the basic mechanic of betting in rounds, strip poker can be played with any form of poker; however, it is usually based on simple variants with few betting rounds, like five card draw.

Another game with the poker name, but with a vastly different mode of play, is called Acey-Deucey or Red Dog poker. This game is more similar to Blackjack in its layout and betting; each player bets against the house, and then is dealt two cards.

For the player to win, the third card dealt after an opportunity to raise the bet must have a value in-between the first two.

Payout is based on the odds that this is possible, based on the difference in values of the first two cards. Good Ol' Poker Flash. Poker Star Flash.

Blackjack HTML5. Uno Flash. Spades HTML5. Pyramid Solitaire Flash. Texas Hold 'Em Flash. Tower of 21 Flash. Governor of Poker 2 Flash. Solitaire Lands Flash.

Cassandras Journey Nostradamus Flash. Flash Poker Flash.