In This Chapter

Exploring poker and the American dream
Getting a feel for pdker basics
Looking at hand rankings
Building a strong foundation for winning
Getting acquainted with general rules and etiquette
Recognizing different types of opponents
Playing in a casino
Getting into a game

Differentiating between casino poker and home games

Poker is America's national card game, and its popularity continues to grow. From Mississippi and Michigan to New Mexico and North Dakota, you can find a game in progress everywhere. If you want to play you can find poker played on replicas of 19th century paddle wheel riverboat or on Native American tribal lands. You can play poker in twetable, no-frills cardrooms and elegant Los Angeles County megaclubs where 150 games (with betting limits ranging from $1-$2 t o $200-$400) are in progress 'round the clock. This book targets readers who are new to poker. If you've played in home games but have never played in a casino, this book can help you too. Even if you consider yourself to have a pretty good hand at the game, this book is bound to improve it.

Poker and the American dream

Poker has always been a microcosm of all we admire about American virtue. It is part of the very fabric Americans have spent more than 220 years weav- ing into a national mosaic. Call it the American Dream -the belief that hard work and virtue will triumph, that anyone willing to work hard will succeed, that right makes might. It is an immigrant's song, a mantra of hope; it is an anthem for everyone.
Poker looks like such a simple game. Anyone, it seems, can play it well - though nothing, of course, is further from the truth. Learning the rules can be quick work but becoming a yinning player takes considerably longer. Still, anyone willing to make the effort can become a fairly good player. You can succeed in poker the way you succeed in life: by facing it squarely, getting up earlier than the next person, and working harder and smarter than the competition.

Where M It All Come From?

A profusion of western movies and gunfighter ballads has convinced the world that poker is a quintessentially American game, yet its roots go back hundreds of years. The Persians were said to play a poker-like game cen- turies ago. Germans played a bluffing game called Pochen as early as the six- teenth century; later, there was a French version called Poque. The French brought this game with them to New Orleans and its popularity spread - aided by the paddle wheelers that traveled the Mississippi. Poque soon became known as poker, and the rules were modified during the Civil War to allow cards to be drawn to improve one's hand. Stud poker, still very popular today, appeared at about the same time. (See Chapters 3 and 5 for the full scoop on Stud games.)
People all over the world play poker, with hundred of versions played in home games everywhere. You can find games going on in casinos and poker rooms in most of the United States, England, Ireland, France, Holland, Austria, Germany, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Aruba, Costa Rica, and probably a few other countries too. People play for pennies around the kitchen table and professionally for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Full chapter only in the printed book