Poker Basics - The Deck

In online poker rooms, just like in the real poker rooms, a wide variety of poker game styles can be found; each having different rules; some styles even have different hand ranks. Whether you play the popular Texas holdem poker or any other style, they all use the same deck.

The poker deck

A poker game is played with one or more decks of cards. The deck consists of 52 playing cards plus 2 more Joker cards which are used in very few poker styles, and usually are not used at all in online poker rooms. The cards are divided in to 4 suits and 13 ranks.

The Suits

The different suits are called after their symbols: Spade, Heart, Diamond and Clubs. They might be abbreviated by their first letter (S, H, D and C). When playing in online poker room or real poker, all suits are equally ranked. Suits ranks are being used in rare case only for very specific maters. The different suits are also referred to as "colors"; the meaning is not to the real cards colors which are only two in number (black and red) but to four "colors" as referring to the four suits. In online poker rooms however there is an option to use for real colors: blue for Diamond, green for Clubs, red for Hearts and black for spades.

Operate the four colors option in our online poker rooms:

• Press the Settings button at the bottom of the window.

• Go to the Game tab.

• Under Default Game Settings check the 4 Color Deck option.

• Press OK .

The Ranks
The 13 card ranks are 2 to 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace. Deuce is the lowest rank and ace is the higher one, however ace can be used as the lowest card (one) in a flush.