Draw Poker

Poker is a major game these days, with millions of people playing worldwide in all sorts of situations, from casinos to organised games with friends, or online. Some people even play poker professionally, with events like the World Series of Poker big money tournaments where the best players can win large sums of money as well as the adoration of television audiences, who can now watch poker as a spectator sport thanks to on table cameras that can let the viewers see players’ hands.

There are countless different versions of what can be called ‘poker’, with some particularly popular in certain countries or featuring variants of the classic rules to make the game more interesting. The three main categories of poker style, however, are draw poker, stud poker and community card poker.

Draw poker refers to any version of poker where the player is dealt a hand of cards all of their own which none of the other players can see, and they have some opportunities to replace cards in their hands with the hope of improving them. The most commonly played style of draw poker is called five card draw, and as you might expect, begins with each player being dealt five cards.

As with all styles of poker, when you are playing a draw poker game there is a list of the order in which different card combinations in your hand score against others, for example the best hand possible is what is known as a royal flush, which is pretty rare, so in many games you can have the best hand of your competitors with something like two sets of fairly high pairs or a ‘straight’ (cards that fall in sequence).

Draw poker is unique from other popular styles like Texas Hold ‘Em, which is a community card poker game, because you cannot see any of the cards another player has at their disposal, and you aren’t sharing cards. This strongly affects how you might predict whether someone is bluffing or not, as in a community card game you may see three cards of the same suit and guess that someone else may well have a flush, but in a draw game you can’t make those kind of predictions. Which style you like and choose to play depends a lot on your own preferences, but also on what is available around you. In Europe and the USA for example, Texas Hold ‘Em is the most common live game, though if you go for a good online poker site, you should have the option to play the style you like best no matter where you are.