1. How To Win In Poker
2. How To Win Online Poker
3. How To Play Poker Video
4. How To Play Four Card Poker And Win

There are a handful of critical aspects when it comes to learning how to play poker. There’s learning the different poker hands and their ranks as well as learning to call, raise, and fold. But there’s also more to it than just that.

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This post tries to capture some of the other aspects of how to play poker, including a few hints about general strategy that might keep you from losing too much money early in your career.

How to Find a Good Poker Game

It’s easy enough to find real money online poker, although if you live in the United States, only a limited number of websites will actually allow US players to compete for real money.

If you’re brand new to poker, though, I suggest getting started with the free, play money games on the internet. You’ll learn a lot about how the game goes.

The most important things to pay attention to begin with is what order everything happens in. It’s important to understand this, especially when you switch to live poker.

And I recommend switching to live poker as soon as possible. I got my start playing on the internet, but live poker has charms all its own.

Another option, which is a better option financially, too, is to find a home poker game. Why’s that a better option? Well, you can avoid paying the rake that way.

When you play poker in a casino, the casino has a dealer run the action. The casino also takes 5% of every pot as their “rake.” This is one of the ways they stay in business.

If you’re at a table with players who are equally skilled, you’ll eventually break even over time. But not if 5% of the pot disappears on every hand. To break even in that situation, you have to play better than everyone else.

How do you find a home poker game? Ask around at the office. If you hang out in a bar, ask around there. You can also find message boards on the internet where locals host poker games, but some of them charge a rake. Such games are “underground” games and are probably illegal.

How to Host a Poker Game

If you have trouble finding a poker game, you can always host. You’ll need at least five or six players to have a decent home poker game, so you’ll probably need to invite 10 people to get a decent game going.

You’ll also need the proper equipment to host a poker game. Obviously, you’ll need decks of cards. I like to have two decks going, so you can have a deck shuffled at all times. There’ll be no pauses in the game while the deck’s getting shuffled.

I also like to use plastic playing cards rather than ones made of cardstock. You’ll pay more for such a deck, but it should last you forever. Kem is a good brand for this.

You’ll also need a poker table. You can find cheap poker tabletops that you can just put on top of your dining room table online. They’re good enough to start with.

Finally, you need clay chips. These used to be expensive, but they’re not too expensive anymore. Don’t host a game with plastic chips. They’re just lame and lack gravitas. Also, don’t host a poker game with a lot of cash on the table. Have your guests buy chips.

Be sure to let everyone know what variant you’re going to play and for what stakes. It’s okay to host a poker tournament and charge an extra $5 toward the buy-in if you’re going to provide snacks and drinks.

You should, in fact, provide snacks and drinks. Just because it’s a poker game doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be a good host, and a good host offers refreshments to his guests.

Also, check out this blog I wrote on how to deal a home poker game if you need extra help on getting your game started.

How To Win In Poker

How to Bluff in Poker

Since I’ve already written posts about how poker hands and hand rankings work, as well as how betting in poker works, I’m going to skip those subjects and get straight into the subject on most people’s minds—bluffing.

A bluff is when you bet with a hand hoping that everyone else will fold. In that event, you win the pot by default.

How To Win Online Poker

A true bluff is a bet where you’re almost certainly have a lower-ranked hand than your opponent. If you think you have a better hand, you’re value betting, not bluffing.

If you don’t play much poker, you might think that bluffing is a bigger part of the game than it actually is. But the truth is, bluffing doesn’t work often enough to be profitable, especially in lower stakes games. They call lower stakes Texas holdem games “no foldem holdem” for a reason.

You need a perfect situation to bluff successfully. Part of that situation is few competitors.

But if you bluff into a single opponent, your odds improve dramatically. Paying attention to your opponents’ tendencies also matters if you’re going to be bluff.

A better strategy is semi-bluffing. When you semi-bluff, you bet aggressively with a hand that probably won’t win, but might improve and be a winner later.

You have two ways to win in such a situation. You win if your opponent folds, but you also win if your hand improves.

The classic example is when you’re heads up with someone and you have four cards to a flush on the flop. You have a roughly 1 in 3 chance of making your flush. If you bet aggressively, though, your opponent might fold. You have two ways to win.

Poker Strategy Tips for Beginners

You can find plenty of strategy tips for poker beginners online, but the biggest and best involve your overall approach to the game.

Most people agree that, especially for a beginner, a tight aggressive approach is the best way to play. There are two concepts to understand in that sentence:

1. Tight
2. Aggressive

I’d like to address tightness first. Poker players can be categorized as tight or loose. This refers to how many hands they get involved in.

A tight player doesn’t get involved in many hands, while a loose player gets involved in lots of hands.

This implies that a tight player has a better hand going into any situation than a loose player. The better hands don’t come along as often, so the tight player obviously only plays when he has good cards or better.

A loose player, though, plays too many hands and sticks with them too long hoping they’ll improve. Some loose players think of themselves as some kind of sheriff with a responsibility to keep the other players honest.

Being tight or loose is a separate concept from aggression, though. An aggressive player might play few hands or a lot of hands, but when he plays a hand, he’s usually betting or raising with that hand.

You’ll rarely see an aggressive player just call a bet. The opposite of an aggressive player is a passive player. And passive players call bets to stay in a hand.

You want to be the kind of player who usually bets instead of checking, who usually raises instead of calling. The goal is to only play when you have good cards. When you do play, you want to bet and raise. You want to get money into the pot when you’re likely to win. This is called being “tight aggressive.”

Tight passive players lose money because they don’t bet and raise enough, so they don’t get any value from their winning hands.

Loose aggressive players sometimes make money in games with poor players because they get a lot of their opponents to fold. Still, when they face someone with some discipline, it’s easy enough for them to win just by waiting for good cards.

Loose passive players are the best opponents. They will call your bets with lousy cards all night. Don’t be a loose passive player when you’re gambling with real money.

Conclusion

There are some of the basics of how to play poker, including how to find poker games and how to host poker games.

I also included some poker strategy tips appropriate for beginning players. You will definitely learn more as you go and put all these tips into practice. So good luck and have fun!

Four Card Poker isn’t really a poker game at all. It’s a casino game like blackjack, but it uses poker-based thinking. (Real poker games force you to play against other poker players, not the casino.)

Roger Snow invented Four Card Poker, which is a trademark of Shuffle Master, a company known for manufacturing automatic shuffling machines.

You get to play an ante bet, an “aces up” bet, or a combination of both. You and the dealer each get 5 cards and get to make your best four-card hand from those cards. There’s also a sixth face-up card.

The casino has an advantage because the player must decide whether to fold before seeing the dealer’s cards. If he folds, he loses his bet, even if he has a better hand. Also, the dealer can use that extra face-up card to complete his four-card hand, giving him a further advantage.

The rest of this post describes in detail how to play four-card poker, what the odds of winning are like, and what the best strategy for winning is.

How to Play

You play against the dealer. There might be other players at the table, but how you compare with the other players doesn’t matter. All that matters is how you do against the dealer.

You start by placing an ante bet, which is required. You might also place an “ante up” bet.

After placing your bets, you get five cards, face-down. The dealer gets five face-down cards, too, but she also gets a single face-up card.

Based on the information you have — the cards in your hand and the face-up card — you must decide to raise or fold. If you fold, the casino gets your bet, and that’s it.

The “aces up” bet, on the other hand, stays in action regardless.

If you decide to stay in the hand, you must raise at least the same amount as your ante bet. You can raise as much as 3x the ante bet.

You then discard a card, leaving you with your best possible four-card poker hand.

The hand rankings for Four Card Poker are, from best hand to worst, as follows:

• Four of a kind
• Straight flush
• Three of a kind
• Flush
• Straight
• Two pair
• One pair
• High card

The dealer turns over her cards, too, and chooses her best four-card hand from the six cards she has available.

If you have a better hand, you win even money on both your ante and raise bets. If the dealer has a better hand, you lose your ante and raise bets.

You get a bonus if you have three of a kind or better, regardless of whether you beat the dealer.

The aces up bet pays off according to the pay table, regardless of whether you beat the dealer.

Four Card Poker Pay Tables

Here are the pay tables for the game. The first is the pay table for the three of a kind bonus; the second is for the aces up bet.

Three of a kind bonus:

• Four of a kind pays 25 to 1
• Straight flush pays 20 to 1
• Three of a kind pays 2 to 1

Some casinos pay more for four of a kind and less for a straight flush, 30 to 1 and 15 to 1, respectively.

Aces up pay table:

• Four of a kind pays 50 to 1
• Straight flush pays 40 to 1
• Three of a kind pays 8 to 1
• Flush pays 5 to 1
• Straight pays 4 to 1
• Two pair pays 3 to 1
• A pair of aces pays even money

This is only one example of multiple pay tables that are available to the game, but this is the most common one.

All of the pay tables pay 50 to 1 for four of a kind, but some of them only pay 30 to 1 for a straight flush. The payout for three of a kind can range from 7 to 1 to 9 to 1. Some pay tables pay 6 to 1 for a flush instead of 5 to 1. The straight pays off at 5 to 1 on some pay tables, too. Two pair sometimes only pays off at 2 to 1.

The House Edge and Strategy for Four Card Poker

The house edge is 2.79%, but that’s based on your initial bet. If you’re raising in the appropriate spots, you’ll put more money into action, which means that the actual house edge is 1.3%. That’s for the ante and raise bets combined.

And that assumes you’re playing with mathematically optimal decisions.

The simplest strategy for the game gives up about 0.5%, making the house edge slightly higher than 3.3%.

It’s an easy strategy to remember. If you have a pair of 10s or better, you should raise the max (3x the ante). If you have a pair of 2s through 9s, you should raise the minimum (1x the ante). Otherwise, you should fold.

You can find better strategies for intermediate and advanced players that will reduce the house edge further, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

Here’s why.

If you’re going to memorize some kind of strategy, why not memorize a strategy for a game where you can get a really low house edge?

If the best you can hope for is a house edge of around 3%, wouldn’t you be better off learning the basic strategy for a blackjack game where you can get a house edge of 0.5% or less?

You could even learn some video poker strategies which would result in a house edge of less than 0.2%.

If you’re willing to give up 1% or 2% because you love Four Card Poker so much, then you probably shouldn’t worry so much about the house edge anyway. Just have fun and don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose.

The house edge for the aces up bet, by the way, is 3.89%. It’s a sucker bet, but it’s not the worst sucker bet in the casino. In fact, it’s still a better bet than a bet on an American roulette table, which has a house edge of 5.26%.

What About Crazy 4 Poker?

Crazy 4 poker is also an invention of Roger Snow, and it’s similar to, but different from, Four Card Poker.

Instead of an “aces up” bet, Crazy 4 Poker offers a “super bonus” bet. There’s also a side bet called “queens up.”

The hand rankings are the same for both games.

The dealer only gets five cards in Crazy 4 Poker, instead of the six cards she gets in Four Card Poker.

But in Crazy 4 Poker, the dealer must open with a king or better. The ante bet pushes if the dealer doesn’t open.

Also, instead of being able to raise, you have a “play” bet. It wins if the dealer doesn’t qualify.

Otherwise, these bets are resolved based on who has the better hand.

The super bonus bet pays off according to the following pay table, regardless of who won the hand:

• Four aces pay off at 200 to 1
• Any other four of a kind pays off at 30 to 1
• A straight flush pays off at 15 to 1
• A three of a kind pays off at 2 to 1
• A flush pays off at 3 to 2
• And a straight pays off at even money

Also, here’s the cool thing about the super bonus bet.

If you win or push (tie) the dealer with your hand, the super bonus bet isn’t lost. It’s treated as a push. But if you have a straight or better, you still get your big payoff.

The house edge for the game is similar to that of Four Card Poker, and this game also requires you to play with optimal strategy to achieve that. You can assume that you’re not going to play optimally, and you’ll sacrifice 0.5% to 1% to the house because of that, too.

Here’s the most common pay table for the queens up bet in Crazy 4 Poker:

• Four of a kind pays off at 50 to 1
• A straight flush pays off at 40 to 1
• Three of a kind pays off at 7 to 1
• A flush pays off at 4 to 1
• A straight pays off at 3 to 1
• Two pair pays off at 2 to 1
• A pair of queens or higher pays off even money

Anything else is a loss with the queens up bet. (Can you figure out how this bet gets its name?)

The house edge for the queens up bet is 6.7%. It’s a terrible bet, and you should never make it. You’re better off with the odds at the American roulette table, which has a house edge of 5.26% (and is still one of the worst bets in the casino).

Conclusion

How To Play Poker Video

Four Card Poker and its close relative Crazy 4 Poker are good examples of casino games based on real poker. They are NOT poker games, though — I reserve that category for games where you play against the other players and not the dealer.

The house edge for these games is high enough that it’s probably not worth your trouble memorizing an intermediate or advanced strategy. You can stick with a simple strategy and eliminate some of the house edge, though.

It’s fun to play on a lark, but I don’t recommend a steady diet of Four Card Poker. Instead, play one of the better video poker variations or stick with blackjack, where the house edge is REALLY low.

How To Play Four Card Poker And Win