A transformation playing card from the 1895 Vanity Fair deck
In early games the kings were always the highest card in their suit. However, as early as the late 1400s special significance began to be placed on the nominally lowest card, now called the Ace, so that it sometimes became the highest card and the Two, or Deuce, the lowest. This concept may have been hastened in the late 1700s by the French Revolution, where games began being played “ace high” as a symbol of lower classes rising in power above the royalty. The term “Ace” itself comes from a dicing term in Anglo-Norman language, which is itself derived from the Latin as (the smallest unit of coinage). Another dicing term, trey (3), sometimes shows up in playing card games.
Corner and edge indices appeared in the mid-1800s, which enabled people to hold their cards close together in a fan with one hand (instead of the two hands previously used). Before this time, the lowest court card in an English deck was officially termed the Knave, but its abbreviation (“Kn”) was too similar to the King (“K”). However, from the 1600s on the Knave had often been termed the Jack, a term borrowed from the game All Fours where the Knave of trumps is termed the Jack. All Fours was considered a low-class game, so the use of the term Jack at one time was considered vulgar. The use of indices changed the formal name of the lowest court card to Jack.
This was followed by the innovation of reversible court cards. Reversible court cards meant that players would not be tempted to make upside-down court cards right side up. Before this, other players could often get a hint of what other players’ hands contained by watching them reverse their cards. This innovation required abandoning some of the design elements of the earlier full-length courts.
The joker is an American innovation. Created for the Alsatian game of Euchre, it spread to Europe from America along with the spread of Poker. Although the joker card often bears the image of a fool, which is one of the images of the Tarot deck, it is not believed that there is any relation. In contemporary decks, one of the two jokers is often more colorful or more intricately detailed than the other, though this feature is not used in most card games. The two jokers are often differentiated as “Big” and “Little,” or more commonly, “Red” and “Black.” In many card games the jokers are not used. Unlike face cards, the design of jokers varies widely. Many manufacturers use them to carry trademark designs.
In the twentieth century, a means for coating cards with plastic was invented, and has taken over the market, producing a durable product. An example of what the old cardboard product was like is documented in Buster Keaton’s silent comedy The Navigator, in which the forlorn comic tries to shuffle and play cards during a rainstorm.
Playing cards have been used as vehicles for political statements. Here, a playing card of the French Revolution symbolising freedom of cult and brotherhood.
The most important part of poker math is pot odds. You compare the cost of a bet to the size of the pot, then compare that percentage to the chances of hitting the card that makes your hand.
Betting limits apply to the amount a player may open or raise, and come in four common forms: no limit, pot limit (the two collectively called big bet poker), fixed limit, and spread limit.
All such games have a minimum bet as well as the stated maximums, and also commonly a betting unit, which is the smallest denomination in which bets can be made. For example, it is common for a games with $20 and $40 betting limits to have a minimum betting unit of $5, so that all bets must be in multiples of $5, to simplify game play. It is also common for some games to have a bring-in that is less than the minimum for other bets. In this case, players may either call the bring-in, or raise to the full amount of a normal bet, called completing the bet.
Outside of the United States, pot limit and no limit games are the most common. Most American home games are played with a spread limit, while casino games are played with spread or fixed limits, though larger casinos may have a high-stakes pot limit or no limit game as well. Fixed limit and spread limit games emphasise the skill of estimating odds, whereas pot limit and no limit games emphasize the skills of game theory and psychology. Almost all poker players believe that pot and no limit poker involve more skill than fixed limit play. A few prominent players, most notably Mason Malmuth, believe that the richer tactics make fixed limit more skilled. Although the main event at the World Series of Poker is played no limit, most high stakes cash games are fixed limit, so it is unclear which format is the experts’ choice.
The local chapter of the Red Knights Motorcycle Club hopes to be part of a record-setting poker run, all for the cause of raising money for the survivors of fallen firefighters.
Poker superstar Phil ( Poker Brat ) Hellmuth , who first started twittering December 18th last year has taken to Twitter like it’s his personal diary. Hellmuth is using Twitter as a live outlet to express his frustrations after a losing hand during online poker play so the rail birds at UltimateBet can experience the full flavor of a Hellmuth outburst, just like on ESPN’s coverage of the World …
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Deuce-to-seven low is a method for evaluating low hands in poker. It is often called “Kansas City” low or just “low poker”. It is almost the direct opposite of standard poker: high hand loses. It is not as commonly used as the ace-to-five low method.
As in all lowball games, pairs and trips are bad: that is, any hand with no pair defeats any hand with a pair; one pair hands defeat two pair or trips, etc. No-pair hands are compared starting with the highest ranking card, just as in high poker, except that the high hand loses. In deuce-to-seven low, straights and flushes count for high (and are therefore bad). Aces are always high (and therefore bad).
For example, the hand -5-4-3-2 defeats -7-6-4-3, because eight-high is lower than nine-high. The hand -6-5-4-2 defeats both, because seven-high is lower still. The hand -6-5-4-3 would lose, because it is a straight. Aces are high, so Q-8-5-4-3 defeats A-8-5-4-3. In the rare event that hands with pairs tie, kickers are used just as in high poker (but reversed): -3-6-4-2 defeats -3-6-5-2.
A special rule is that a wheel is not considered a straight: A-5-4-3-2 is simply ace-high no pair (it would therefore lose to any king-high, but would defeat A-6-4-3-2.
It’s called deuce-to-seven low because the best possible hand is -5-4-3-2, followed by -6-4-3-2, -6-5-3-2, -6-5-4-2, -5-4-3-2, -6-4-3-2, etc.
When speaking, low hands are referred to by their highest ranking card or cards. Any nine-high hand can be called “a nine”, and is defeated by any “eight”. Two cards are frequently used: the hand -6-5-4-2 can be called “an eight-six” and will defeat “an eight-seven” such as -7-5-4-2.
Another common notation is calling a particular low hand “smooth” or “rough.” A smooth low hand is one where the remaining cards after the highest card are themselves very low; a rough low hand is one where the remaining cards are high. For instance, -7-6-4-2 would be referred to as a “rough eight,” but 8-5-4-3-2 would be referred to as a “smooth eight.”
Wild cards are rarely used in deuce-to-seven games, but if used they play as whatever rank would make the lowest hand. Thus, in -6-Joker-3-2, the joker plays as a , while in Joker-5-4-3-2 it would play as a (a six would make a straight, and an ace would make ace-five high).
High-low split games with deuce-to-seven low are usually played with a declaration.
The Grenfell Car Club and Ulysses Bike Club will be holding a Poker Run this Sunday April 19 to raise funds to assist in the building of CareWest Lodge.
Pari-mutuels could expand poker room hours and pot sizes under a bill approved by a Florida House committee. Poker rooms at tracks and jai-alai frontons could stay open 24 hours, maximum raises would be $50 instead of $5 and maximum Texas hold-em buy-ins would be raised to $1,000 from $100.
Tracking poker play in a B&M casino is very difficult. You can easily monitor your winnings, but tracking any detailed statistics about your game requires a player to take notes after each hand, which is cumbersome and distracting.
Conversely, tracking poker play online is easy. Most online poker rooms support “Hand Histories” text files which track every action both you and your opponents made during each hand. The ability to specifically track every single played hand has many advantages. Many third-party software applications process hand history files and return detailed summaries of poker play. These not only include exact tallies of rake and winnings, which are useful for tax purposes, but also offer detailed statistics about the person’s poker play. Serious players use these statistics to check for weaknesses or “leaks” (mistakes that leak money from their winnings) in their game. Such detailed analysis of poker play was never available in the past, but with the growth of online poker play, it is now commonplace among nearly all serious and professional online poker players.
When former marketing executive Mark Brown heard about a social networking Web site proposal that would feature poker and be able to target ads to specific partners, he thought it sounded like a good — and potentially profitable — idea.
One of the most widespread forms of gambling involves betting on horse races, most commonly on races between thoroughbreds or between standardbreds.
Wagering may take place through parimutuel pools; or bookmakers may take bets personally. Parimutuel wagers pay off at prices determined by support in the wagering pools, while bookmakers pay off either at the odds offered at the time of accepting the bet; or at the median odds offered by track bookmakers at the time the race started.
In Canada and the United States, the most common types of bet on horse races include:
win – to succeed the bettor must pick the horse which wins the race.
place – the bettor must pick a horse which finishes either first or second.
show – the bettor must pick a horse which finishes first, second, or third.
exacta, perfecta, or exactor –the bettor must pick the two horses which finish first and second and specify which will finish first
quinella or quiniela – the bettor must pick the two horses which finish first and second, but need not specify which will finish first.
trifecta or triactor – the bettor must pick the three horses which finish first, second, and third and specify which will finish first, second and third.
superfecta – the bettor must pick the four horses which finish first, second, third and fourth, and specify which will finish first, second, third and fourth.
double – the bettor must pick the winners of two successive races; most race tracks in Canada and the United States take double wagers on the first two races on the program (the daily double) and on the last two (the late double).
triple – the bettor must pick the winners of three successive races; many tracks offer rolling triples, or triples on any three successive races on the program. Also called pick three.
sweep – the bettor must pick the winners of four or more successive races. In the US, this is usually called pick four and pick six, with the latter paying out a consolation return to bettors correctly selecting five winners out of six races, and with “rollover” jackpots accumulating each day until one or more bettors correctly picks all six winners.
Win, place and show wagers class as straight bets, and the remaining wagers as exotic bets. Bettors usually make multiple wagers on exotic bets. A box consists of a multiple wager in which punters bet all possible combinations of a group of horses in the same race. A key involves making a multiple wager with a single horse in one race bet in one position with all possible combinations of other selected horses in a single race. A wheel consists of betting all horses in one race of a bet involving two or more races. For example a 1-all daily double wheel bets the 1-horse in the first race with every horse in the second.
People making straight bets commonly employ the strategy of an ‘each way’ bet. Here the bettor picks a horse and bets it will win, and makes an additional bet that it will show, so that theoretically if the horse runs third it will at least pay back the two bets. The Canadian and American equivalent is the bet across (short for across the board): the bettor bets equal sums on the horse to win, place, and show.
In Canada and the United States punters make exotic wagers on horses running at the same track on the same program. In the United Kingdom bookmakers offer exotic wagers on horses at different tracks. Probably the Yankee occurs most commonly: in this the bettor tries to pick the winner of four races. This bet also includes subsidiary wagers on smaller combinations of the chosen horses; for example, if only two of the four horses win, the bettor still collects for their double. A Trixie requires trying to pick three winners, and a Canadian or Super Yankee trying to pick five; these also include subsidiary bets. The term nap identifies the best bet of the day.
A parlay (US) or accumulator (UK) consists of a series of bets in which bettors stake the winnings from one race on the next in order until either the bettor loses or the series completes successfully.
(Similarly, greyhound racing offers a popular betting alternative to horse racing in many countries.)
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A transformation playing card from the 1895 Vanity Fair deck
Playing cards have been used as vehicles for political statements. Here, a playing card of the French Revolution symbolising freedom of cult and brotherhood.
