If you are a new player to poker then you couldn’t have come to a better place to learn some of the basics and fundamentals of the many different variants of the game, in particular Texas Hold'em and Omaha.

You can read as much as you like about poker, in general, but the best way to learn and improve is to actually get amongst it and get a feel for the game. The best places to start are either amongst friends or by playing on the internet at a poker site, where you can play on "play" or "free" money tables without even having to leave your home. There are an abundance of online poker sites to play at.

In general, cards are dealt to a player “hole cards”, or to the table “community cards”, or to both depending on the variation of the game. Each player then attempts to make the best possible hand and gambles on the strength of their hand against the other players hands by comparing them using a common ranking system, which is used in most forms of poker.

The aim of poker is to win money or chips by capturing the pot. This is achieved by producing the strongest combination of cards or by becoming the last player remaining active in the hand after all other players have folded (discarded) their cards.

Generally, most forms of poker involve several rounds of betting, based on exposed community cards, ultimately ending with a "showdown" (comparison of cards) to determine the winner of the hand.

Poker has many variations, all following a similar pattern of play and using the same hand ranking hierarchy. There are three main families of variants, largely grouped by the protocol of card-dealing and betting:

• "Straight" - A complete hand is dealt to each player, and players bet in one round, with raising and re-raising allowed. This is the oldest poker family; the root of the game as currently played was a game known as Primero, which evolved into the game Three-card brag, a very popular gentleman's game around the time of the American Revolutionary War and still enjoyed in the U.K. today. "Straight" hands of five cards are sometimes used as a final showdown, but poker is currently virtually always played in a more complex form to allow for additional strategy.
• Stud - Cards are dealt in a prearranged combination of face-down and face-up rounds or "streets", with a round of betting following each. This is the next-oldest family; as poker progressed from three to five-card hands, they were often dealt one card at a time, either face-down or face-up, with a betting round between each. The most popular stud variant today, 7 card stud, deals two extra cards to each player (three facedown, four faceup) from which they must make the best possible 5-card hand.
• Draw - A complete hand is dealt to each player, face-down, and after betting, players are allowed to attempt to change their hand by discarding unwanted cards and being dealt new ones. 5 card draw is the most famous variation in this family.
• Community - A variation of Stud, players are dealt an incomplete hand of face-down cards, and then a number of face-up "community" cards are dealt to the center of the table, each of which can be used by one or more of the players to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold-em and Omaha are two well-known variants of the Community family.