Poker is increasingly becoming the favourite cards game of many people and especially since the enormous diffusion of online poker rooms, which make playing the game more accessible than ever, the number of players has not stop growing.

The reasons to start playing poker are multiple and varied. Some people start playing because some of their friends were also doing it at some point in their lives, so they got attracted by them. Other people saw a poker competition on the TV and started wondering how it would be to be able to play it. Some do it for fashion; others because they love feeling the adrenaline running in their bodies and the majority simply play poker because they are truly passionate about it!

In any case, there are still a lot of people who does not know how to play it, and they may be willing to learn. Whether you want to learn playing in online poker rooms or in land based casinos, it is recommended to get first familiar with the cards and the basic rules in order to make easier the learning process. A continuation, a basic explanation of the cards values and the best hands you can get playing the 5 draw poker version is given:

In this version, there are 52 cards in the following order from high to low: ace, king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. The cards are grouped in 4 different card suits which have exactly the same value: club, spades, heart and diamonds.

The best hand you can get is a Royal Flush, which is made of a 10, a jack, a queen, a king and an ace belonging to the same card suit. Getting a Straight Flush is also very good, but not as good as the Royal one. You will get a Straight Flush when you reunite 5 cards in numerical order belonging to the same card suit.

The third best possible hand is called four of a Kind, which means that you will have 4 cards in strict numerical rank plus one random card. If you got 3 cards with the same numerical rank together with two random cards you will have a Full House, which is almost as good as the previous one.

The fifth best hand is called Flush, which is composed of 5 cards belonging to the same suit in any order. This hand is better than having 5 cards in numerical order that do not belong to the same suit, in other words, having a Straight.