The essence of poker

When you look at the very basic nature of poker, stripped of its usual complexities and layers, it eventually becomes apparent that poker is actually two different games entirely. One game is a game of cards similar to other card games such as Bridge. These are all games where your primary goal is to play your cards well and normally the player who does so, wins.

Poker, no doubt, is also a game where your goal is to play your cards well; however, this is in reality only one part of poker. The other part of poker has little to do with cards at all, it is a betting game which can be played without the use of cards. Naturally, when you combine the card game with the betting game you have what we call poker.

To make it interesting, let's look at each game separately:

The Card Game:

The card game consists of dealing each player the same amount of cards until the desired amount of cards are dealt to each player. On each round the players engage in social commentary and make various comments and gestures meant to intimidate the other players into thinking only they have the very best hand at that point in time. These actions are accompanied with throwing colored plastic pieces into the center of the table as a further means of trying to discourage other players. At various points in the game a number of players become despondent enough about their hands so they fold them and refuse to play any longer in this particular hand and, at times, even depressed enough about their luck that they quit the entire game, refusing to even pick up cards for future games. At the end of each hand players still in the game compare hands and the best hand gets a bunch of colored plastic from the center of the table.

The Betting Game:

The betting game of poker consists of a number of players sitting around a table with colored plastic pieces called chips. Each color of chip represents a certain value in money. The betting takes place in four or five rounds of betting. After a player is forced to start the betting the following players can match the bet, raise the bet or fold thereby forefeiting the opportunity to bet on future rounds of betting or win any of the chips on the table. Subsequent rounds of betting continue until either all players, except one, folds. If more than one player is left at the end of the hand, some cards are flipped up at that time to determine a winner. The winner collects the chips in the center of the table.

As you can see, the betting game can be played entirely without cards, as a winner at the end could be decided with dice or a coin flip. It should be noted however, that most players would soon discover that only the last player remaining gets paid, so the struggle to win becomes mostly a matter of nerve and chips, since the actual winner is only decided at the end and cannot be previously known.

The card game can also be played entirely without betting as some player could probably be persuaded to fold just from conversation or feeling their cards could not possibly win. It should be noted however, that most players would soon realize that they have nothing to lose by staying to the end and may, in fact, win even with very bad cards.

It is soon apparent that neither of these games would be very interesting in themselves and only when combined do they make a complete game.

It is interesting however, to separate poker into these two games should give you a better insight into poker strategy. By looking at the two games, we find that most lower level poker, is more of the card game and less of the betting game, whereas; the higher levels of poker are primarily a betting game.

Something to think about!

Senior Poker Columnist
Janice Carroll
www.headsuppokerchampion.com

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