POKER

Poker is a popular bluffing card game played both in casinos across the world and at home among groups of friends. While it wasn’t popular when it first showed up out West (it was a slower-paced game, after all), poker eventually caught on and could be found in most gambling halls. There are many different variants of poker today; the three most popular variants are draw poker, stud poker, and community card poker. The poker they played in the Old West was different from how we usually play now, though. Back then, poker decks only had twenty cards in them – aces, kings, queens, jacks, and tens in the four traditional suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades) – and all twenty got dealt out to the players. Draw poker wasn’t played in the Old West, so you had to play with the cards you were dealt. The winning hands of the day included the “full” (now known as a full house), “triplets” (three of a kind), and the classic royal flush. That was also the only kind of straight flush, seeing as how there were no cards under ten.