Popular Poker Variations

Getting straight to the variations of Poker card game, the most prevalent variations include the famous four: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Seven Card Stud & 2-7 Tripple Draw. Although there are several other Poker variations available, yet these four are most popular poker variants spread in casinos and poker rooms worldwide

Texas Hold’em Poker:

Texas hold’em is the most popular variant of Poker game and also the “industry standard” these days when it comes to poker tournaments. Almost all world’s popular tournaments are played in a variation of this game, whether it be the World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour, the European Poker Tour, and any other.

If we talk about very basic description of the game, Texas Hold’em is played with a 52-card deck, each of the players receives two hole cards to begin the hand, and then 4 round of betting takes place. These rounds are named as preflop, flop, turn and river in sequence.   A player may use any combination of the seven cards available to make the best possible five-card poker hand, using zero, one or two of their private hole cards. Play moves clockwise around the table, starting with action to the left of the dealer (or button).

Omaha:

The one dazzling difference between Texas hold’em  & Omaha is that each player receives four hole cards in Omaha rather than two. In order to produce a winning hand, a player must use two cards from his hand, but can only use two cards. Like Texas Hold’em, betting rounds in Omaha flop, turn and river play the same. Further there are two most commonly spread variations of the game – Omaha High and Omaha 8-or-better.

It’s always recommended to learn Texas Hold’em first as it helps a lot when making the transition into Omaha.

Seven-Card Stud:

Seven card stud is the most popular version of stud poker. This variation of Poker game can be played between two and eight players. In 7 Card Stud game, each player has seven cards to deal with. Two of these 7 cards are in the hole and one face-up, followed by an initial bet. Then three cards face-up, with a betting round after each card dealt, and a final card in the hole with a final betting round followed by the showdown. 

2-7 Tripple Draw:

2-7 Triple Draw is a 5 card draw low game. In this variation of game, each player is to deal with 5 cards and finally the goal is to make the lowest possible 5 card hand. There are four rounds of betting and three draws. After each round of betting players choose cards to discard, anywhere from 0 to 5, and the dealer deals them replacement cards. After the third and final draw there is one last round of betting. A dealer button is there to determine the order of betting and discarding the cards.