| Poker for beginners
Why not up the ante with the guys and learn how to play a killer game of poker? In the first part of the iVillage poker school series, we take you through the basics of recognising and ranking the various poker hands As a card game, poker is fairly one-dimensional and not very interesting, and anyone who played for matchsticks at school would probably confirm this. Poker without gambling is not dissimilar to a car without petrol. However, you need to understand how the card game works before putting together your best gangster's moll outfit and throwing a poker party, so that's what we'll look at first. If we forget about the betting for a while, the game is pretty straightforward: essentially, everyone has five cards, and the person with the best five cards is the winner. The various types of poker - that stuff you see in movies, with people going "Seven card stud, deuces wild, dealer ante" or whatever - are basically just different ways of arriving at the five cards which make up your hand. You work out who has 'the best five cards' as follows, with highest card being the worst possible hand, and a straight flush being the best:
A number of these hands are self explanatory, specifically a pair (for example, 10♥ 10♣ 7♦ 5♥ 3♠), two pair (J♣ J♠ 10♥ 10♦ 6♠), three of a kind (6♦ 6♥ 6♣ 4♥ 2♠) or four of a kind (A♦ A♥ A♠ A♣ 3♦). The higher the cards, the better they are, so that two Aces beat two Kings, three Fives beat three Fours, and so on. And if two players have hands of the same value, the decider is the next highest card, known as a 'kicker'. So 10♥ 10♣ A♦ 3♥ 2♠ - 'a pair of Tens with an Ace kicker' - beats 10♦ 10♠ Q♦ J♥ 8♠. A straight to a straight flush
A flush is five cards of the same suit. As with a straight, you refer to a flush by its highest card, so that A♥ 5♥ 4♥ 3♥ 2♥ is an 'Ace-high flush' - and beats a 'King-high flush', whatever the value of the four remaining cards. The four suits are of equal value. A full house is three of a kind and a pair (e.g. K♥ K♦ K♠ Q♠ Q♥). This hand would be referred to as 'Kings over Queens' or 'Kings full of Queens'. If two players have a full house, the hand with the higher three of a kind wins (so that K♥ K♦ K♠ Q♠ Q♥ would lose to A♦ A♠ A♣ 2♦ 2♥). A straight flush is five cards from the same suit in numerical order (e.g. 8♠ 7♠ 6♠ 5♠ 4♠). An Ace-high straight flush is known as a royal flush, and is the very best hand you can have. If no-one has any of the other hands listed, the person with the highest card is the winner. Finally, if some smart alec decides they want to play with wild cards, it's possible you can end up with, say, five Kings. There are differing opinions about whether five of a kind is better than a straight flush, and the arguments get kind of complicated. It's probably best to steer clear of wild cards at first. However, if you decide to use them, make sure you agree on the value of five of a kind before you begin. All of this may seem complicated, but it's actually not too bad once you get the hang of it. As an example, say we have four players with the following hands:
Player one has a pair of Aces. Player two also has a pair of Aces, but beats player one, since Q♣ is the better kicker. Player three has a Seven-high straight. Player four has a full house - Sevens full of Twos - which is the best of the four hands. Next: the basics of betting, or how to keep your shirt while everyone around you is losing theirs. |