Draw vs. Stud. vs. Hold’em

If horseracing is the sport of kings then poker must surely be the game of emperors. Of all the poker variants that I’m aware of, there are three particular favourites that make it to the top of my list, time and again. These games range from five-card draw games to seven-card stud and then the big daddy of them all – Texas Hold’em games. Of course the latter needs little introduction, but for all of you poker greenhorns fresh out of poker school, a little introduction to these variants will be of tremendous value.

In draw poker games players are dealt a complete poker hand and they work hard at improving the hand value by holding certain cards and releasing others. When it comes to stud poker each player will receive a variety of face-up cards as well as face-down cards in several rounds of betting. If you’re playing community card poker then you’ll notice that each and every player will sport a hand showing some cards face up and some cards face down. As I’ve already mentioned earlier, both Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hold’em are community card poker games.

What about the rules of poker variants?

Like the gaming variants the rules also differ. There are many exciting and novel rules for poker games. I’m going to go through a couple of them in this post and more in future posts. If we’re going to talk about a high-low split then both the highest and lowest poker hands would typically share the spoils of the pot. So you could really be the worst or best player and still benefit. In a game like lowball the lowest hand would take it all. Special rules to look out for are whether or not the Aces are low or high. But there are other rules too, like how much weight is lent to straights and flushes. I particularly enjoy kill games where a fixed limit game is played and a player wins two pots consecutively. If the potential winnings are doubled, then its known as a kill game.  If we want to make some cards wild then this is easily done in poker. Deuces wild, Jacks wild, 7’s wild are all very common variations of this particular poker theme.