In most games, you must 'ante' something (amount varies by game, our games are typically a nickel), just to get dealt a hand. So, how do you bet? Poker is, after all, a gambling game. Sometimes jokers will be used as wild cards, other times, the game will specify which cards are wild (dueces, one-eyed jacks, or whatever). Some games have Wild Cards, which can take on whatever suit and rank their possessor desires. All poker hands contain five cards, the highest hand wins. The Very Basics: Poker is played from a standard pack of 52 cards (some variant games use multiple packs or add a few cards called jokers). The cards are ranked (from high to low) Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace (Ace can be high or low, but is usually high) There are four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs) however, no suit is higher than another. This list is currently broken into several parts: This is meant as a very basic primer into the rules of poker. (This isn't to say that there isn't skill at poker when nothing is at risk, there just isn't nearly as much). However, when you introduce the concept of betting, poker gains quite a bit of skill and psychology.
