subject: How To Play Poker [print this page] Poker is gaining popularity nowadays because of its prominence in television and as most celebrities take to it. It is easy to get started and play the game as an expert. If you have gone to a casino and seen people play it, you might have come out thinking that it is hard to learn the tricks of this game. One thing is for sure, anyone can learn how to play it within a short time. Shown below are some of the ways of how to play 5-card draw poker which will assist you to get the basics of the game. The first step in your quest to playing the game as a professional is to familiarize yourself with the poker hand rankings. The winner of the game is determined by the person having the highest valued hand. Unless you know which hand will take the pot, you cannot win a game. In this case, if there are two players who have tied or that none of the players has a winning hand and then the player with the highest value card will win. The highest value card is the Ace so you need to memorize the hands and have a print of the poker hands. The second step when you want to know how to play poker professionally is to chip in. Here, you need to place an ante or token at the pot which is a spot at the center of the poker table. You can also use a pot if you so wish so every player will place an equal amount of any currency be it nickel, poker chips, car cars, bills or any other valuable and whoever wins the hand will take it all. The third step is to deal or to be dealt with. When the game is over and the cards have been shuffled, the dealer will have to distribute the cards making sure that all the cards are facing down. When distributing the cards the dealer will start with the player who is in his immediate left and distribute in a clockwise move, one card at a time until each of the players have five cards. Once the cards have been distributed and every player has five cards, you can look at your cards while everyone else looks at theirs. At this point, you will evaluate how strong you hand is but if you are a beginner player, you can show how strong your hand is, this is known as a tell. You need to try and reduce the tells if you want to win the game. The fifth step when playing this game is thus to take turns.
