Understanding Straight Poker
Straight poker is a poker game that requires a lot of luck and bluffing skills. Unlike other forms of poker, you cannot, by any means, improve your hand during the course of the game. Each player is dealt a set of five cards, and the players’ objective is to make the best out of what they are dealt to beat the hand of their opponents. The game is known to be a showdown of luck mainly because the players can only hope that they get a good hand from the dealer.
How the Game is Played
The game makes use of a 52 card deck. There can be as little as two people or as many as 14 people as players per round. The ideal number of players would be somewhere in between. The game can also make use of the joker cards, as wild cards in the game. The ranking of the combinations in the game from the most valuable to the least are as follows:
1. Five of a Kind – four cards of the same rank with a joker as the wild card
2. Straight Flush – five cards in sequence all belonging to the same suit, the highest being the Royal Flush consisting of A, K, Q, J, and 10.
3. Four of a kind – four cards of the same rank with an unmatched card as the fifth.
4. Full House – three cards of the same rank and a couple more with the same rank, different from the first three.
5. Flush – five cards that are not in sequence belonging to a single suit.
6. Straight – five cards that are in a sequence with more that one suit used.
7. Three of a Kind – Three cards with the same rank and a couple of unmatched fillers.
8. Two Pairs – A couple of cards belonging to the same rank, another couple belonging to another rank and an unmatched card as the kicker.
9. One Pair – A couple of cards belonging to the same rank, together with three unmatched cards.
10. High Card – A set of cards with no particular combination mentioned above.
A Good Strategy
A good poker strategy, and probably the only strategy in the game is bluffing. If you’re good at bluffing, you are at an advantage. Aside from your luck, you can make use of a good bluff to make your opponents back out from the match. The art of bluffing relies on only one thing – your poker face. A good poker face means that your facial expression or behavior never changes during the phases of the game. The purpose of the bluff is to avoid letting your opponent or opponents know whether you have a good hand or not. You can then either force them to fold by making them think that you have a good hand even though your hand may only be a high card or so, and you can bait them to call or even raise if you have a good hand.
Straight Poker isn’t much of a complicated type of poker game. The game is based almost purely on luck. If you’re feeling lucky, or if you’re really proficient in bluffing, you’re most likely to find this an interesting game.
