Poker

Trademark Poker 500 Chip Poker Case with Full Color High Quality Graphics

Price: $47.49*
(Shopping Warehouse)

Features: Beautiful high gloss chip case which holds 500 poker chips. Top features a full color rendering of a poker game in progress. This high quality case is perfect for any game room or tournament. Trademark Poker Logo is featured in the corner and on the poker chips.

Merchant: Shopping Warehouse

---

Deluxe Poker Chip Caddy

Price: $49.99*
(Stacks and Stacks)

Bring the excitement of a genuine Las Vegas casino poker game to your home with this premium poker chip caddy set. Comes with 240 heavyweight, casino-quality poker chips in four colors to liven up any poker game.

Merchant: Stacks and Stacks

---

Texas Hold 'Em: Felt Layout 36" x 72"

Price: $21.99*
(eToys)

This portable felt has a layout for the popular casino game, Texas Hold 'Em Poker, the same game played on ESPN's "World Poker Tour" and Travel Channel's "World Series of Poker.

Merchant: eToys

---

500 Soprano Striped 10g Clay Poker Chips w/Aluminum Case

Sale Price: $84.90*
Retail: $99.99 (15% off!)
(NetLink Enterprises, Inc.)

These 500 Striped Casino Chips with carrying case are beautiful and will be the envy of your next card game. These 39 mm diameter casino-sized chips are the same style of poker chips used in the exclusive poker games seen on T.V.! They look like clay chips.

Merchant: NetLink Enterprises, Inc.

---

Deluxe Carousel Poker Rack Set

Price: $26.14*
(Online Sports)

AEvalue-priced quality poker set.EOurEDeluxe Carousel Poker RackEset containsE200 7.5 gram casino style poker chips and instructions on playing Texas Hold'em Poker, the most popular poker game in the country right now!

Merchant: Online Sports

---

Air Force Mascot 300-chip Poker Set-Air Force Mascot 300 Poker Chip Set

Sale Price: $54.99*
Retail: $84.50 (35% off!)
(Overstock Sports Gear)

Host the next poker game with this 300-chip poker set Air Force Mascot poker chips are officially licensed Sleek poker set is weighted and sized to official casino standards

Merchant: Overstock Sports Gear

---

History

The history of poker is a matter of some debate. The name of the game likely descended from the French poque, which descended from the German pochen ('to knock'), but it is not clear whether the origins of poker itself lie with the games bearing those names. It closely resembles the Persian game of as nas, and may have been taught to French settlers in New Orleans by Persian sailors. It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan. The English game brag (earlier bragg) clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing (though the concept was known in other games by that time). It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now.

English actor Joseph Crowell reported that the game was played in New Orleans in 1829, with a deck of 20 cards, four players betting on which player's hand was the most valuable. Jonathan H. Green's book, An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling (G. B. Zieber, Philadelphia, 1843), described the spread of the game from there to the rest of the country by Mississippi riverboats, on which gambling was a common pastime. As it spread up the Mississippi and West during the gold rush it is thought to have become a part of the frontier, pioneering ethos.

Soon after this spread, the full 52-card English deck was used, and the flush was introduced. During the American Civil War, many additions were made, including draw poker, stud poker (the five-card variant), and the straight. Further American developments followed, such as the wild card (around 1875), lowball and split-pot poker (around 1900), and community card poker games (around 1925). Spread of the game to other countries, particularly in Asia, is often attributed to the U.S. military.

The game and jargon of poker have become important parts of American culture and English culture. Such phrases as ace in the hole, ''ace up one's sleeve, beats me, blue chip, call one's bluff, cash in, high roller, pass the buck, poker face, stack up, up the ante, when the chips are down, wild card'', and others are used in everyday conversation even by those unaware of their origins at the poker table.

Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began in 1970. Notable champions from these early WSOP tournaments include Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim, and Doyle Brunson. It was also during that decade that the first serious strategy books appeared, notably The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN 1880685000), Super System by Doyle Brunson (ISBN 0931444014), and The Book of Tells by Mike Caro (ISBN 0897461002).

Poker’s popularity has experienced an unprecedented spike in recent years, largely due to the introduction of online poker and the invention of the hole-card camera which finally turned the game into a spectator sport. Viewers can now follow the action and drama of the game, and broadcasts of poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour have brought in huge audiences for cable and satellite TV distributors. Because of this increasing coverage of poker events, poker pros are becoming more and more like celebrities, with poker fans all over the world entering into expensive tournaments for the chance to play with them. This increased camera exposure also brings about a new dimension to the poker pro's game - the realization that all of their actions, intended or not, can now be viewed by all of their opponents.

Game play

While the game of poker is played in hundreds of variations, most follow the same basic pattern of play.

The right to deal each hand typically rotates among the players and is marked by a token called a "buck" or "button". In a casino a house dealer handles the cards for each hand, but a button (typically a white plastic disk) is rotated among the players to indicate a nominal dealer to determine the order of betting.

For each hand, one or more players are required to make forced bets to create an initial stake for which the players will contest. The dealer shuffles the cards, he or another player cuts, and the appropriate number of cards are dealt to the players one at a time. After this initial deal, the first of what may be several betting rounds begins. Between rounds, the players' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt. At the end of each round, all bets are gathered into the central pot.

More details can be found in the article on betting.

At any time during the first or subsequent betting rounds, if any player makes a bet, all other players are required to match it or to surrender their cards and forfeit their interest in the pot. If one player bets and no other player chooses to match the bet, the deal ends immediately, the bettor is awarded the pot, no cards are shown, and the next deal begins. This is what makes bluffing possible, and is a primary feature of the game that distinguishes it from other vying games and from other games that make use of poker hand rankings.

At the end of the last betting round, if more than one player remains, there is a showdown in which the players reveal their previously hidden cards and evaluate their hands. The player with the best hand according to the poker variant being played wins the pot.

Details about the order of play and hand rankings for the most common variants can be found in the articles on betting, hand rankings, and poker variants. Most popular poker variants can be loosely classified as draw poker, stud poker, or community card poker (a.k.a. "widow games"); miscellaneous poker games exist as well. The most commonly played games in these categories are five-card draw, seven-card stud, and Texas hold 'em, respectively; each being a common starting point for learning games of the type.

Computer players

The game of poker (or at least most of the variants) is considered to be computationally intractable. However, methods are being developed to at least approximate perfect strategy from the combinatorial game theory perspective in the heads-up (two player) game, and increasingly good systems are being created for the multi-player or ring game. Perfect strategy has multiple meanings in this context. From a game-theoretic optimal point of view, a perfect strategy is a minimax one that cannot expect to lose to any other player's strategy; however, optimal strategy can vary in the presence of sub-optimal players who have weaknesses that can be exploited. In this case, a perfect strategy would be one that correctly or closely models those weaknesses and takes advantage of them to make a profit. Some of these systems are based on Bayes theorem, Nash equilibrium, Monte Carlo simulation, and Neural networks. A large amount of the research is being done at the University of Alberta by the GAMES group led by Jonathan Schaeffer who developed Poki and PsOpt.

One major aspect of poker is being a game of imperfect information. Some cards in play are concealed, so the players cannot deduce the exact state the game is in. This fundamentally differs from games like chess where all information about the game's current state is public. A major part of the skill of live poker games, however, is guessing at the strength of a player's hand by identifying tells made by other players, while concealing one's own. As a computer would not make any physical tells, playing against a computer would necessitate reading tells only from the bets placed. Once the 'mind' of the computer is known it can exploited.

Although you cannot read a computer opponent, playing against computer opponents can still help you sharpen your skills by learning how to count outs and play the percentages. With the advancing technology of artificial intelligence, computer players can be created to incorporate bluffs and other human-like decisions.