Rules of Five Card Draw Poker

Five Card Draw is the standard and most basic form of poker. There are tons of other variations out there like the popular Texas Hold’em and different forms of Stud Poker like Five Card Stud and Caribbean Stud. But before understanding any of those other games, you need to know the basics.

For Five Card Draw, each player must ante up, or put in a small wager to play the hand. Then, five cards are dealt to each player. Five Card Draw is similar to the betting of Texas Hold’em but doesn’t have community cards. Once the cards are dealt, the first round of betting proceeds. You must form the best poker hand and can discard however many you want from you hand. But there is only one round of discarding. The dealer collects the discards and issues new cards to those players. A second round of betting occurs. Players can raise and re-raise each other until everyone has called or folded. Then, there’s a showdown and the cards are revealed to determine the winner.

Sounds easy, right? Well, poker is a game of strategy. The best players know the odds of each hand winning in any scenario. Playing poker online is much easier than at a land-based casino where you must enter your name and wait for a table. At online casinos, you just click on a table to join and play with however much your deposited into your account. The tables will have different stakes. If you’re just starting out, play online first to learn the game since poker is a game of etiquette. You will learn when to place your bets and have lots of time to make decisions. Another benefit of online casinos is that you can move a lot faster. Once the hand is over, you can change seat or tables.