Poker is by far the most popular card game played in America today (if not the world), in terms of both the amount of money that changes hands every year, as well as in the number of players involved.

Though there are hundreds of variations of Poker being played today, they can mostly be placed into three main classes:

• Flop Games (Like Hold 'em and Omaha) in which each player receives their own hole cards and 5 exposed community cards (flop) that are available to all players. The hole cards are hidden from the other players until the showdown (completion of the hand).

• Stud (like 7 and 5 Card Stud) Poker, in which some cards in each player's hand are exposed to all the players as the betting progresses, and all the active players' cards being exposed at the showdown.

• Closed games, like draw poker where you see no cards except your own until the showdown.

In all the variations of poker, two factors remain constant:

1. The value or rank of each poker hand.

2. At the showdown (when the round of play ends) the hand cannot consist of more than five cards, even though more cards are used in many poker variations.

Mention poker to someone and you're likely to hear of one of these three poker stereotypes:

• Wild Wild West: where Mississippi Riverboat gamblers with striped shirts and thin moustaches have a derringer hidden up their sleeve, or Dodge City residents like Doc Holliday or Wild Bill Hickok sitting around a smoky table in a saloon.

• The Sting: from the famous movie, comes the image of Chicago mobsters sitting in a cigar filled room, a bottle of cheap scotch on the table, and a husky football player standing ready at the peep-hole.

• The Kitchen Table: Uncle John and Aunt Bessie are sitting around their kitchen table playing with their many visiting relatives, with a penny ante. Somehow all their nieces and nephews come away with penny-stuffed pockets.

Since the late 1980's, poker has undergone a revolution toward respectability. Today's poker is clean, brightly lit, and decidedly middle class. Like bowling and billiards beforehand, poker has moved from its seedier roots into daylight and acceptance by the masses. No matter where you live, it's likely that you are only a few hours away from a public card room, or just blocks from a friendly game. Poker is all around you.

Poker has achieved its outstanding popularity for the following reasons:

1. It can be played by rich and poor alike. The stakes may vary from no limit to penny ante, just as long as the minimum and maximum betting limits are agreed upon before the game begins.

2. It is easy to learn.

3. It may be played in a great many different ways.

4. Any number of players from two to eleven at one table may play, although two to ten make the best game (Cash Games, Side Action) but in the Tournaments you can see as many as 1,000 players starting out at 100 tables, which ends up with one winner. Many of these larger tournaments are played over more than one day.

5. It is strictly a gambling card game, whether it is Hold'em, Poker penny-ante style or Seven-Card Stud table stakes. The gambling can be replaced with other incentives to play well. Without the gambling or incentive factors it would be one of America's least played games. PokerSchool is showing the industry how to replace the "gambling element" during the learning phase.

6. Each player, on his own, battles all the others. There is no partnership play.

7. It combines both chance and skill and is the only game in which a player can win only one hand all evening and still come out a winner, or win any more than the average number of hands and still lose to the game's action.

"If there is any more engrossing card game for a group of reasonable, congenial friends of fairly equal playing ability than Poker, I have yet to learn about it." -John Scarne

Quoted in part according to the Famous Card Authority John Scarne from his book "Scarne's New Complete Guide to Gambling".