About poker - Poker is called the American national game. (It shares this distinction with baseball.) Actually, poker comes as close to being international as any card game possibly could. It probably originated in Persia; it developed in Europe; it did attain its present form in the United States—probably in the 1830s—but today it is played in every country in which playing cards are known.

Game of skill - Since the earliest days of poker, people have made the mistake of considering it a gambling game. It seems to be a gambling game because it is usually played for money and in fact it is no good if it is not played for money. Nevertheless, poker is farther from a gambling game than almost any other card game you can think of, even contract bridge.

Laws of poker - It has often been said that poker has no official laws. I have been guilty of making that statement myself. When I reconsider I realize that exactly the opposite is true. Poker has innumerable sets of official laws.

There is no disagreement about the laws of correct procedure. Everyone agrees on the rank of the cards, the order of play, the method of betting, etc.

Forms of poker - As mentioned above, there are innumerable ways to play poker. All have some features in common, such as the rank of the hands and the basic fact that each hand eventually consists of five cards; all have their points of difference that affect not only the procedure of play but also the strategy of play. The selection of a game is not wholly a matter of taste. Some games are definitely more suitable to a particular group or a particular setting (such as a home or club) than other games. I will list the main subdivisions of the game and make some observations on their suitability for particular groups and occasions.

Stud poker - Five-card stud—the first card face down, all others face up. No game has lost popularity so rapidly as this one. Thirty years ago two-thirds of the professional games were five-card stud; today not one-tenth of the games are. Five-card stud, the original and basic form of open poker, is a game for serious and conservative players.

Freak games - Lowball, or Low Poker. This is any form of draw poker in which the lowest poker hand instead of the highest wins the pot. Perhaps because most players consider themselves poor cardholders, this form of the game has had a tremendous rise to popularity since the late 1930s, but almost solely on the Pacific Coast. The low-hand principle creates a lot of action because there are many more good one-card draws to otherwise worthless hands than there are in other forms of poker.

Have to know - No matter what kind of poker game you are playing in, there are certain things you have to know. I list them and comment on them below. They are listed in order from the simplest to the most complex. The more of them you are capable of, the greater your chances of winning. Therefore, obviously I start with "kid stuff" that any poker player worth his salt knows as a matter of second nature and I progress to factors that may not even occur to anyone but players of the highest rank:

Advice - Don't scoff at this—75 percent of all poker players have difficulty remembering.

All these are relative values and vary in accordance with the game you are playing. It is absolutely necessary knowledge that you must take into any game with you. In jackpots draw poker a pair of sevens is a weak hand not worth playing; in blind-opening draw poker, in certain circumstances, it might be a good hand worth a stay and even a bet.

Ethics & Etiquette - Poker is not a sociable game but it is distinctly a social game. That is, it is a game one must play with others, and we may assume that every human being would rather be popular than unpopular and also that every group will soon reject a player who is generally disliked by the other players. Therefore if you are playing in a poker game and you want to keep on playing, it behooves you to conform to the social customs of the game and make sure that the other players do not hate you enough to kick you out.

Mathematics? - You don't have to be a mathematician to be a good poker player. It doesn't even help.

True, poker offers some of the most fascinating of mathematical problems and for that reason has engaged the attention of the best mathematicians. Some of their researches invade the highest levels of the higher mathematics. Their findings are published in books.

Bluffing - I wish I could write anything useful on the subject of poker psychology, but I cannot. I have read literally thousands of pages on the subject. It is interesting for a poker addict to read about this type of player and that type of player and what their habits are and how to detect them, but from a practical standpoint it is all bosh. Poker psychology is a matter of special aptitude.

Position - Position in poker is a matter of the number of players who can still act after you. Playing position is a matter of taking into consideration what those players may do, before you decide what to do yourself.

Position is a mystery to most poker players. But next to the relative value of your hand it is the most important thing for a poker player to think about in the game.

Money management - Seasoned poker players will usually assure you that money management is at least as important as any other factor in skillful play. Many of them say that it is the most important single factor. I am going to start this section with a few general but absolutely essential statements.

First, the factor of courage. Here I will quote from a book by the celebrated card expert, John Crawford, because I could not possibly say this better:

Card memory - There is less of the drudgery of counting and memory in poker than in other card games of skill, but unfortunately you will need some counting and memory even in poker. If you aren't capable of it you can still be a pretty good player but you won't be a master player.

In stud poker, memory of cards is important. In draw poker, you don't have to remember many cards but you do have to analyze the special values of certain cards. In both games, you have to both remember and analyze certain things that your opponents have done. I will take these up one by one.

Draw poker - There are many forms of draw poker and I will have something to say about several of them, but there are a few considerations that apply to every form of draw poker and I will discuss those first.

1. The draw. If your object is merely to improve your hand, there is no question that you are best off making the maximum draw: that is, three cards when you have a pair, or two cards when you have three of a kind.

Jackpots - This game has several unique features. First, the pot seldom offers more than 2 to 1 odds in the early stages; in the classic game, there are eight players, each antes a quarter to start the pot with $2, and the limit is $1 before the draw, $2 after the draw (or any ante, first limit and second limit proportionate to those figures). Unless at least three players are in before you and no one has raised, you must throw away all bobtail straights and four flushes. Since you know that the maximum hand is a pair of jacks, you can play no less than kings as second man and need at least aces thereafter.

Straight draw poker - This is the game in which you can open on anything and in each turn you must bet or drop ("pass and out"). In each turn you must at least chip along, where in a jackpots game you could check free.

Much depends on the relative value of a white chip (the chip of lowest value; it may be blue). Some players make the white chip of nominal value only—say ten cents, when the limit is $1 before the draw and $2 after, and when the white chip is seldom bet except for perfunctory purposes.

Blind opening - Of all forms of draw poker, this is one in which it is most important to play sheer percentages. I mentioned before (page 34) that you cannot afford to sit back and wait for a killing or a cinch in this game, because the overhead per round is so high. When you have a better-than-even chance to win, you must be in there.

Lowball - This is a very new game, as poker games go; it is not much more than thirty years old. Its success has been phenomenal in some districts; in the legal games of California, there is probably as much lowball played as regular poker. The game has enriched the language of poker with many new terms: The best hand is a bicycle, or wheel. A relatively good hand of its kind is "smooth" and a relatively bad hand of its kind it "rough." For example, 9-8-6-3-2 is "a rough nine," while 9-5-4-3-2 is "a smooth nine." Lowball introduced the novelties that ace is low rather than high, and that straights and flushes do not count.

The Bug - Since lowball is usually played with the bug, and other forms of draw poker are often played with the bug (west of the Mississippi, at least) I will digress now to discuss special considerations applying to any game in which the bug is used.

You know, of course, that the bug is the joker; but it is not the joker as an unrestricted wild card. The joker defined as the bug can be used only as an extra ace or to fill a straight or a flush.

High-low poker - This is a game of draw poker in which nothing differs from any other game of draw poker except that the high and the low hands split the pot. In some high-low games, the ace can be treated as the low card in a low hand, but these games are rare and I will consider only the game in which the high hand is reckoned exactly as it would be in any other poker game and the lowest possible hand is 7-5-4-3-2 of different suits. Straights and flushes count and must be treated as high hands.

Deuces wild - Many serious poker players will be horrified that I should discuss this game at all, but it is perhaps the most underrated of all forms of poker—simply because it is played most often by women's afternoon clubs and others who do not take the game seriously.

Actually deuces wild is just as good as any other form of poker and presents its own peculiar problems.

Stud poker - Five-card stud poker depends on mathematics and self-discipline. The average winning hand is the lowest among all games of poker—a pair of kings or a pair of aces. Overhead is almost non-existent; there is almost never an ante, and you do not have to bet unless you have the high card showing on the first round. As a result you can sit in the game for literally hours and hardly spend a penny, waiting for a good hand to come along.

7 card stud - In this game the average winning hand is a fair three of a kind, such as three eights or three tens. There are quite a few straights and flushes. The worst mistakes made by the average player are: staying on a low pair, such as fours or fives; and staying more than one round on a straight or flush possibility.

7 high-low stud - Perhaps this game is important to only a few players, but to them it is very important. In the world of celebrities—society, motion pictures, radio and television, publishers and authors-it has been the most important form of poker for some twenty years.

More than any other form of poker that I know, this is a game of principle and of observation.

General laws - There are several worthy sets of poker laws (see page 11). It is not so important that players adopt any particular set of laws as that they adopt some set of written laws and follow it strictly. If players wish to add house rules or special customs it is their privilege to do so but these too should be written. The following laws are recommended because experience has shown that they answer virtually any question that is likely to arise in a poker game.

Irregularities - 11. Redeal. Any player, unless he has intentionally seen the face of any card required to be dealt to him face down, may call for a new shuffle, cut, and deal by the same dealer if it is ascertained, before the dealer begins dealing the second round of cards, that:

Draw poker - 26. The Draw, (a) When each player has exactly called the highest previous bet, without raising, or has dropped, the first betting interval ends. The dealer picks up the undealt portion of the pack, and each active player in turn to his left may discard one or more cards, whereupon the dealer gives him that number of cards, face down, from the top of the pack. A player need not draw unless he so chooses.

Stud poker - 31. Betting in stud poker, (a) In each betting interval the player with the highest exposed combination (as defined by paragraph 32) has the privilege of betting first. In the first betting interval, this player must bet at least the minimum established for the game. In any subsequent betting interval, this player may check.

Possible poker - I said before that the higher mathematics of poker are not very important. It doesn't help a player much to know the chances of being dealt a straight flush or a full house or even a pair. Yet most of the published tables of poker probabilities are confined to that kind of information.

Blind opening - Chance of beating one opponent who has not bet voluntarily (that is, chance of beating the blind raiser when you are the blind opener:)

If you draw 5 cards	9 to 1 against you
If you draw 4 cards to an ace	1 1\2 to 1 against you
If you draw 3 cards to an A-K	Z to 1 against you
If you draw 2 cards to a flush	8 to 1 against you
If you draw 2 cards to a straight	8 to 1 against you
If you draw 2 cards to a straight flush	6 to 1 against you
If you draw 3 cards to a low pair (4, 3, 2)	Even
If you draw 3 cards to a medium pair (5 to 9)	11/2 to 1 for you

Lowball - The following odds apply to lowball played with the bug. In each case it is assumed that the bug is not in the hand.

One card to 7-high	31/2 to 1 against
One card to 6-high	.51/2 to 1 against
One card to 5-high	9 to 1 against
Two cards to any three cards under 7,
to make 7-high or better	271/2 to 1 against
One card to 8-high	2 to 1 against
One card to 9-high	Even

THE END