Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown (in some games, the pot is split between the high and low hands), limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed. In most modern poker games, the first round of betting begins with some form of forced bet. The action then proceeds to the left. Each player in turn must either match the maximum previous bet or fold, losing all further interest in the hand. A player who matches a bet may also raise, increasing the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either matched the last bet or folded. If all but one player fold on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without showing his hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, the hands are shown and the winning hand takes the pot.[1]

Players feel that this betting system distinguishes poker from gambling games. With the minor exception of initial forced bets, money is only placed into the pot voluntarily by a player who, at least in theory, rationally believes the bet has positive expected value. Thus while the outcome of any particular hand is determined mostly by chance, the long-run expectations of the players are determined mostly by their actions chosen based on probability and psychology.
- reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker



History Of Poker:
No one really knows how Poker came to be. Most people have concluded that it is made up of a variety of earlier games. In its earliest recorded history, Jonathan H. Green (believed to have first attached the word “Poker” to the “cheating game”) saw the game being played on a Mississippi riverboat and was intrigued. He described the game as being played by two to four people, with 20 cards—only the Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and 10s were used—and each player was dealt five cards.

Why is it called Poker?
Researchers looked into games of other countries to see if there was any game whose name sounded anything like “poker.” They came up with an eighteenth-century French game called poque, a German game that involves a certain amount of bluffing called Pochspiel, and there's even a suggestion that the word derived from a Hindu word: pukka.

Well, more realistically, the word “poker” probably finds its origins in the underworld of thieves. Some of the card hustlers may have already been using the expression since “poke” was a slang word used by pickpockets. It is believed that card hustlers, who emerged from that same underworld to cheat unsuspecting opponents, used the word in relation to their card-playing victims. The “r” might have been added to throw off players who were wise to the underworld slang. The reason Poker has such seedy origins has mainly to do with the fact that it is a simple game (sometimes even a quick game, depending on the version you're playing), it involves an element of cheating, and it's played for money.
- reference: http://fun.familyeducation.com/games/card-games/45737.html

Poker Hands- Texas Hold'em

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