I'm a Muslim, so let me preface this by saying that I'm against gambling.
So don't play poker with money. It's just a game. If you want to make
money, get a job. If you want to lose money, give it to me. If you
want to risk money, get a job and flip a coin: if it comes up heads,
send me your pay check. Pleasure doing business with you.
All the same, I do like poker. It's hard to get a game going without playing for money, though, so I'm kind of inexperienced. The only variant that I know with any degree of familiarity is Texas Hold 'Em, and since I'm not playing with money, I play only no limit.
If you don't know the rules of any poker game, I recommend this (fairly exhaustive!) page (local mirror). Here are some Card Tricks and Chip Tricks.
I'm forever forgetting the poker hands, so here they are for my convenience:
- Five of a Kind (when possible) — five cards all of the same rank.
- Straight Flush — five consecutively ranked cards of the same suit.
- Four of a Kind — four cards all of the same rank.
- Full House — a pair and three of a kind.
- Flush — five cards of the same suit.
- Straight — five cards of consecutive ranks.
- Three of a Kind — three cards of the same rank.
- Two pair — two pairs.
- Pair — two cards of the same rank.
- High card
measured expected error
1. no hand 500995 500000 0.20%
2. pair 422777 421576 0.28%
3. two pair 47477 47427 0.11%
4. three of a kind 21030 21079 0.23%
5. straight 3998 3915 2.12%
6. flush 2048 1961 4.44%
7. full house 1402 1437 2.44%
8. four of a kind 258 240 7.50%
9. straight flush 15 14 7.14%
runtime: 6m23.173s