Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
To go even further back, the work "poke" probably came from the
To go even further back, the work "poke" probably came from the hocus-pocus of the magician. In the Middle Ages, before pockets came into fashion money was carried in a bag which hung from the belt, and the first pickpockets were called cutpurses because they lifted the purse by cutting it free. Many of the fifteenth-century paintings and engravings of magicians performing show cutpurses busily at work in the crowd; some of these cutpurses may have paid the conjurer a percentage for working in his audience just as pickpockets once did in this country when they traveled with circuses. Like the magician, they also used misdirection and sleight of hand and were, in their own way, hocus-pocus men.
The Mississippi River sharpers who first called the game Poker may
The Mississippi River sharpers who first called the game Poker may have got their original inspiration in New Orleans from sailors who played a very old Persian game called As-Nas, whose basic structure is the same. Twenty cards are used, five are dealt to each player, pairs and such combinations and sequences as form the melds at Rummy are winning combinations, and bluffing is an important factor.