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One of the best things about the game of poker is the variety. From the fundamental rules of poker you have the Draw and Stud variety, the community card games, the wild cards, the five and seven card games, and so on.
Online poker puts all of this variety instantly at your fingertips; any time that you get the urge, you can connect with someone else, anywhere in the world, that feels like playing the same kind of poker that you want to play.
There are three broad categories of poker, Draw and Stud, and a number of different variations of each.
In Draw poker games, the player can choose to replace one or more of his cards with cards from the dealer’s deck. See our 5-card Draw Poker page for more information on the basic draw poker game. Each player attempts to make the best combination of five cards; the winner is determined by comparing the players’ individual hands.
In Stud games, the dealer places all of that hand’s cards on the table, some face-down (“hole cards”) and some face-up. Our 5-card stud section outlines the fundamental rules for basic stud games. Standard stud games have individual sets of cards for each player (“streets”)
Technically, Stud also covers the extremely popular community card games such as Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hold’em. It’s not unusual to find community card games listed separately from Stud games, however, as the rules are so distinct. In a community card game, there are a number of cards which can be used by all players. It is not unusual for “showdown” or final hands in community card games to consist of several of the same community cards, with only one or two of the individual players’ cards to determine the winning hand.
Lowball poker variants reward bad hands instead of higher-ranking hands; you may see lowball variants of both draw (e.g., California Lowball) and stud (e.g., Razz) poker.
Pai Gow could technically also be considered a Stud Poker variant; however, the basis for the game comes from Chinese dominoes and merely uses poker hand rankings to determine winning hands. It shares very little similarity to any other poker variant (except possibly the lowball variant 2 7 poker).
Video Poker is nearly always based on Draw Poker rules, though there are one or two notable video poker machines that use Stud Poker rules instead.