Poker is a family of complex card games, each with its own ranking system that differs slightly from the other. As far as the ranking of poker games are concerned, a simple comparison would be the horse race. Each horse has its own characteristics, ability and strength. Thus each horse race has its own ‘position’ in the racing track.
Poker ranks cards according to certain fixed criteria; namely hands that have been dealt face down, the total amount of chips that have been used and the highest pre-flop value of the pot. A poker player who follows these three criteria will not necessarily win every hand he plays, but he will have an advantage compared to a player who doesn’t. The best players in the world are masters of card games; hence the need for poker ranking.
After each hand, the flop, the player will reveal his cards – either to the table or to his opponents. Only then will the players know the position of their chips on the table. The player with the highest hand will move his chips to his new pot. The second highest player will move his chips to his previous pot and the third and fourth player will do the same. Thus the betting interval is known as the betting wave.
After the betting round, if there is still a big stack of chips after the betting round, it will result in another pot. The players may split the chips among themselves and the last person with the most chips will win the ante. If all the players have equal ante amounts then a wild card will be thrown – in a number different than the number of players in the poker table, thus making the game unpredictable and exciting.
In some games, whether you bet high or low, the cards will have special values. There are two different types of bets in poker: forced bets and bluffing. A forced bet is when a player bets high and hopes that his opponent will bet high as well. Bluffing is when you put forward fake cards that look real and hope that your opponent will fold these cards. Of course it is much easier to bluff with the number of genuine cards, which makes the game much more unpredictable and exciting.
There are two types of poker cards: the wild cards and the regular cards. Wild cards are dealt face down, and wild cards are easy to recognize since they are triangular in shape. Regular cards are dealt from left to right. They have a number printed on the back, and a regular poker card’s suit is written on the top.