Online Poker Games

Correctly understanding the rank of poker hands is a vitally important skill in all forms of poker. Once you have mastered the rank of poker hands you will be able to begin the journey towards becoming a profitable poker player – whether you play in a home poker game, casino or online.

Poker Hands Ranked below are in order from the strongest to the weakest.

Royal Flush

The royal flush is the strongest poker hand possible, this is the Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten all of the same suit. This is essentially a ‘Straight Flush’ with the highest possible cards.

Straight Flush

A straight flush is any straight that is all of the same suit. The highest straight flush is the Royal Flush as outlined above, Ace-2-3-4-5 of the same suit is the lowest possible straight flush.

4 of a kind (Quads)

Next in the poker hand rankings comes 4 of a kind. This is only beaten by a straight flush. 4 aces is the highest 4 of a kind hand.

Full House

A Full House is a hand that contains 3 of one type of card and 2 of another. For example K-K-K-4-4 is a full house known as ‘Kings Full of 4′s”. Where there are 2 full house hands make the hand with the highest card making the 3 component will win. For example 7-7-7-3-3 would beat 5-5-5-K-K

The Flush

A flush is made up of 5 cards of the same suit and will beat all the hands below. In the event of two players making a flush the one with the highest single card is the winner. For example if player 1 has 6-9-10-J-K of one suit he would lose to a player with 3-4-7-8-A of one suit – the ace high flush beating the K high flush regardless of the rank of the remaining cards.

The Straight

A straight is 5 cards in order, for example 5-6-7-8-9 regardless of suits. Aces can make low or high straights (A-2-3-4-5 or 10-J-Q-K-A). Straights do not wrap around from high to low, for example Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight!

3 of a kind (Trips)

Any 3 of the same cards are known as trips. Where 2 players end up with the same trips the rank if the remaining cards is taken into account. For example if both players end up with 9-9-9 but one holds an Ace while the highest card the other holds is a ten then the player with 9-9-9-X-A would win the hand.

2 pairs

2 pair hands are fairly low in the poker hand ranking chart and are beaten by all of the hands mentioned above. Again when 2 players have the same 2 pairs the one with the higher unpaired card will win the hand. In a game with community cards such as texas Holdem the highest card may already be on the board leading to a split pot. Remember to compare the best 5-card hands in this situation.

1 Pair

Single pairs are near the bottom of poker hand rankings – as with 2 pair and trips hands kickers (highest unpaired cards) may come into play where 2 or more players hold the same pair.

High Card Only

In the unusual event of reaching a showdown with no players holding any of the hands above the highest card wins. If (for example) both players hold an Ace then the next highest card is taken into account. Once again remember that in community card games such as holdem the best 5 card hand wins – for example if the board were 7-8-9-K-A and both players held just Queen-high then the pot would be split if both players other card was 9 or below.

Gl at the Tables.

Mark

In any poker room the best players do not depend on luck. Good players have a very good ability to estimate about precise odds and they bet only on positive chances and they avoid playing negative outcomes. They play in any poker room either because they have an unbeatable hand or they are probably smart at making others believe that they are holding something unbeatable.

There are some people in a poker room that will not be able to bring themselves to fold unless the hand that they hold does not have any kind of chance for winning. More often than not such players are those that will stick on to seeing the last card that is being dealt. These people in any poker room tend to be calling and making raises even with the most hopeless hand. Even when the flop did not hit in their favor, they will still be playing. Such players are those that will lose in the long run even the simplest poker room that has players that are less skilled.

The role of a good poker player in any poker room is to reduce the risk of playing wrong hands and not to take chances with a worse hand. In some cases risks on hopeless hands might pay off good, and there is likely to be a temptation to repeat the attempt in the next poker room, but truly it can lead to long-term losses.

There are yet some other players in any poker room that bet on cards that are yet to come. This kind of betting refers to betting on a hope that the next card that will be dealt in the table will be much in their favor. It might be dangerous to be playing such hands unless the odds are already in your favor based on your existing hands.

There is an interesting logic to poker playing where you need not believe anyone in the poker room because you play for 2 reasons. One could be possibly because your hand is unbeatable and the next is because the odds are pretty much in your favor. This is going to be very useful when you will be playing against weak players that can give confusing tells that can be sometimes true and sometimes not. So, work out your odds, play if it is favorable and fold if it is not favorable.

Poker has been around for centuries, so how come the sudden boom that has recently taken the Internet by storm?

I’m a big poker fan, and have been for years. I played poker regularly with my friends and family years before the advent of poker online. There were some things that I didn’t like about playing with my friends: the first thing was that I had to wait till we got some folk together before we could play, so I usually had to wait till a Wednesday or Sunday evening; second of all, when it started getting late people started dropping off to go home, which left little enough people to play, until within a few hours it was over; thirdly , and sometimes most annoyingly was that if you went all in and went out early in a game you had to sit and watch everyone else play for maybe an hour or more – how frustrating!

These, I believe, are the reasons for the boom in poker popularity. These reasons were the biggest reasons not to play poker, but now when you play poker online you have full control over when you play; when you stop playing, and when you go out you can simply start another game. Because of these features added by the power of the internet, a great game has been allowed to flourish.

The only difficult part about making the progression into the online world of poker is finding out where the best places are to play, and where to stay away from. When I started playing poker online this was the most daunting stage for me. If I’d have known then what I know now I would have been a lot more at ease when I was starting out.

What I have learned along the way is that there are sites out there to help the online poker beginner find out where the best places are to play; which places to stay away from, and which poker rooms are suitable to play in when the poker player fancies a change of scenery. One such site is the poker review site Poker Online UK. This site gives a number out of ten (a poker rank) of the top poker websites on the internet; and gives a description of the sites that it has ranked. This site also provides bonus codes and links from which the poker beginner will get bonus cash when they make a deposit using the code, or signing up through the link.

Another poker review site I found out about is Poker Websites. This site is similar to Poker Online UK, but in a different style. Poker Websites has a number that has been mathematically calculated to rank all of the top poker websites. The last time I was on the Poker Websites site I found out about the new site Poker News that’s associated with Poker Websites. Poker News is a new website dedicated to providing online poker players with the best poker news that they want to know about.

Poker has been around for a long time, but it’s only now that we enthusiasts have the freedom to play it whenever we want. God bless the Internet!

John Vorhaus is unlike any other poker author in that he is first and foremost a writer, but even more, a philosopher about the game of poker. His Killer Poker Books have all stood out from the competition in a way that other writers can’t really touch and nor should they try. For doing so would be like Montel Williams emulating Plato. John Vorhaus is different. His writing about the game evokes self discovery as opposed to hand-to-hand combat, ala Harrington. Vorhaus approaches this angle with an introspect few of us players would have delved into otherwise. The thing is, you can know all there is to know about NL Hold’em, but to be ultimately successful, an understanding of yourself is critical to that end.

Enter Killer Poker Online 2. This is the 4th book in the Killer Poker Series that focuses primarily on no limit holdem and tournament online play. Now focusing on these games doesn’t mean chapters of hand analyzing and “what would you do next” scenarios. It means uncovering your desires, emotions, greed, fear and other factors that propel you into such confrontations. In effect, Killer Poker gives you the power over such emotions to make the right decision in a game critical intersect. Does this sound confusing? That goes with the territory of discovering yourself as a poker player and a human.

I am not saying it’s a tough read to understand, but you surely will find yourself rereading numerous segments of this book as if you were about to complete a huge puzzle in your mind and were only a few pieces away. In fact, In Killer Poker style, the writing goes back and forth from philosophical statements like “Deception is what you do to others, delusion is what you do to yourself” then to chat box ignorance like “can u be my bich?”, all the while keeping you entertained, entrained, and thinking about your game like never before.

Killer Poker Online 2 includes some really intense chapters on sit and go tournaments, multi-table tournaments, and heads-up sit and go tournaments each of which were the value of this book alone. Now I don’t mean cookie-cutter strategies. Vorhaus advocates your own strategy for each and every situation, but by adding his own humility, skills, and experience to these topics you leave each chapter with a frame of mind about yourself and your competitors that you absolutely know will give you an edge.

Killer Poker Online 2 is an advanced strategy book to be used with others in developing yourself into a consistent online poker winner. By giving this entertaining, but deep thinking prose a chance to come into your game, it will certainly lead to a better bankroll. Mr. Vorhaus, please, don’t stop!

I can also add here that Will Wheaton’s foreword was as interesting as many other poker books in their entirety, and can easily see a great piece of work from him in the future.