How to play 5 Card Draw poker: Rules and Winning Strategies

What is 5 Card Draw poker?

For many people including myself, 5 Card Draw is one of the first poker games that you learn. One of the main reasons for this is that it's a 'real world' game that people often become accustomed to before they enter the world of online poker, where Texas Hold'em and Omaha reign supreme. Although you can find 5 Card Draw games on various online poker room websites, it's not as popular for the simple reason that there's only two betting rounds and it's not as lucrative as games like Texas Hold'em and Omaha, where there are four rounds of betting. This often means bigger pots and more money if you know the game well.

5 Card Draw to many is still the archetype of poker, due to it being a direct descendant to Primero, a card game that was popular in Victorian Britain and many parts of Europe that allowed players to bet money on who had the best hand. 5 Card Draw is synonymous with the saloons and casinos of the Wild West, and if you ever see the likes of John Wayne, Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas playing cards in one of the old westerns, it'll be 5 Card Draw that they'll be playing.

It remains a favourite today because it's an easy game to learn (possibly the easiest poker game to pick up and play) with friends. My first introduction to 5 Card Draw was working in the pub trade in my late teens where at around 11pm on a Sunday night the landlord, some of the bar staff, and a few regulars would have a 'lock in', break open a bottle of Irish Whisky and a pack of King Edward cigars and play 5 Card Draw into the early hours of the morning. They'd play small stakes for fun, and it was my boss David who first taught me to play poker. I've been a fan ever since.

The Rules of 5 Card Draw poker

5 Card Draw is played by no more than eight players, due mostly to the fact that if all eight participants wish to draw more than three cards each, the dealer would run out of cards. After all, eight players with five cards each uses up forty cards from a fifty two card deck. It is possible to draw a straight, flush or a full house but usually in 5 Card Draw winning hands hold high pairs (1010,JJ,QQ,KK,AA), medium/high two pair hands, three of a kind or if you're luck is in the Holy Grail of poker hands – Four of a kind! As a reminder of the hand ranking system in poker I've inserted it below.

So lets get started. Each player puts in an 'ante' which is a small bet before the cards are dealt. An ante is usually 10% of the betting limit, so if you're playing a $5/$10 game then the ante for each player will b $1. The dealer deals one card face down to each eight players, and then again until all eight have five cards face down that only they can see.

After assessing their cards there is a round of betting, and the choice to fold, call or raise. After the bets have been placed the original ante and the bets are added to the pot. Each player can discard and draw up to three new cards if they wish or opt to 'stay' and keep their original hand. This is the only chance to 'draw' in 5 Card Draw (some variations of the game such as 2-7 Triple Draw allows you to draw new cards three times, however, by allowing this the true blood-and-guts spirit and do-or-die attitude of the game is lost).

There is now a final round of folding, betting and raising. If more than one player has called, then all players who are still in turn their cards over and the winner takes the pot.

Variations of 5 Card Draw poker

7 Card Draw poker – In this variation seven cards are dealt to each player instead of five.

High / Low Declare – In this high / low split variation of the poker game that can either be played with five or seven cards, each player needs to declare between the first round of betting and the draw which end of the pot they are aiming to win. The pot is split equally between the highest and lowest hands. A player who declares a low hand but ends up drawing a high hand is excluded from the pot.

Jacks or better – In this variation of 5/7 Card Draw players may only ante in and play a hand if they have a card that is Jack or higher.

Shotgun poker – In this variation things progress as with any draw game until the final betting round, after which each player turns one card over and betting begins again. When this round is over each player shows a second card and betting begins again until each player has either folded or turned all their cards over. The winner with the best hand wins the pot unless a high / low split game is declared by the dealer at the beginning of the game.

2-7 Triple Draw poker – In this variation which has proved to be quite popular in some online poker rooms each player aims for a low hand of cards between 2 and 7. Low pairs, trips or a full house will lose to a hand with no pairs. There are also three drawing rounds which increases each player's chances of making the ideal hand of 2-3-4-5-7.

Winning Strategies in 5 Card Draw poker

A round of 5 Card Draw is short, especially given that there are only two betting rounds. Poker psychology and the experience/confidence to be able to mislead, manipulate and bluff are key to being successful. One of the most powerful strategies in 5 Card Draw is to raise/re-raise before the draw, opt out of the draw or draw only one card, then follow the drawing round with another raise. Use this sparingly as after a while other players will call you every time instead of folding, which is what you want them to do, giving you an easy win.

Bluffing can be a powerful tool in 5 Card Draw poker, but can also damage you severely. In nine out of ten scenarios it is best to play the hand you are dealt, and play it well. Drawing three cards (unless you already have a pair) in the drawing round means you are chasing a hand and relying on luck instead of intuition; if you've got a weak hand fold it and save your money. Your average player will always bet to get to the drawing round, but this strategy leaves them high and dry with no a short stack of chips very quickly. This is the difference between gamblers and skilled poker players.

Riding the H.O.R.S.E: Winning a mixed game poker tournament

This is definitely not a tournament for the faint of heart! You may be able to fluke your way into the top three of a Sit & Go, but winning a H.O.R.S.E poker tournament demands skill, a deeper understanding of poker as a whole and nerves of steel. 

Are you still sure you want to play? Okay then, don't say I didn't warn you...

What is H.O.R.S.E poker?

A H.O.R.S.E poker tournament is made up of a round of five different styles of poker; Texas Hold'em poker, Omaha High / Low poker, Razz Lowball poker, Seven Card Stud poker and Eight or Better Seven Card Stud poker. Texas Hold'em and Omaha are two games where community cards are used as well as player cards, while Razz, 7 Card Stud and 8 or better 7 Card Stud all rely on cards that are dealt to the players. I'll go through each game in a bit more detail and then we'll look at the key strategies to help you win big.

Give me an 'H'!

Texas Hold'em poker is a pretty fast game so these hands last hardly any time before you're on to the Omaha High / Low round. Each player is dealt two cards (a pocket pair), and then in between rounds of betting three community cards are drawn, followed by a forth and then a fifth. Now comes a final round of betting and each player has seven total cards ( 2 pocket cards and 5 community cards) to make the highest five card hand that they can following the normal poker hand ranking system using at least one of their pocket pair cards. After this round it's into a round of Omaha High / Low poker.

Give me an 'O'!

Along with Texas Hold'em, Omaha is one of the most popular games at online poker rooms. In H.O.R.S.E we play a variant called Omaha High / Low where each pot is split between the player with the highest ranking hand and the player with the lowest ( 8 or lower ). Omaha High / Low is very similar is it's structure of betting rounds and use of five community cards; but the main difference is each player id dealt four cards instead of eight. That sounds like good news until you realise that the winning hand (highest or lowest) must be made up of exactly two of your own cards and exactly three of the five community cards. In Omaha High / Low the King is high and the Ace is low, so you're looking for either a low ranking hand of A-8 or a high ranking hand 9-K. 

Give me an 'R'!

Razz is the first of three round of Seven Card Stud each slightly different. In Razz the player with the lowest ranking hand wins (A-8). See below and I'll explain the basic principles of Seven Card Stud poker properly.

Give me an 'S'!

Seven Card stud does now use community cards or draw cards and only uses cards that are dealt to the player, 7 in total with some face up and others face down. This means that players can see half of each others hands, while keeping their face down cards secret. The winner is the one with the highest ranking hand once betting is over and each player turns their cards over.

Give me an 'E'!

Eight or Better is the third variant of Seven Card Stud where just like in Omaha High / Low the pot is split between the player with the highest and the player with the lowest hand. Hand ranking of lowest is A-7 and the highest is 8-K. After this hand it's back for another round of Texas Hold'em.

Strategies for H.O.R.S.E

1. If you already play online poker I'm going to take an educated guess and say you know how to play Texas Hold'em, so the first thing I'd suggest is getting to know Seven Card Stud poker too so that you become proficient enough in the game to win whether its High, Low or a High / Low split game. As three of the five rounds of H.O.R.S.E are Seven Card Stud learning, understanding and playing it well is the first thing you need to do.

2. If you are able to consistently win at Hold'em and Seven Card Stud, begin practising Omaha High / Low which I'm betting you have played at least once. It's a much slower game than Texas Hold'em and is far less forgiving of players making minor mistakes, dictating an exact number of cards to make a hand. Whenever playing a High / Low split game the decision to either build a high or low hand needs to be made very early on, and if possible before the community cards are even dealt. You can edge your bets and aim for the middle, and you might even get lucky, but this won't stand you in good stead in the long run.

3. As the game progresses remember which round of Seven Card Stud you're in, whether it's Low, High or High / Low. Remember what each game represents in the acronym H.O.R.S.E and if you get lost or confused fold the hand and begin the next one with a clear head. Nobody is perfect and at times of stress and excitement it's easy to forget what round you are in.

4. You won't meet many happy-go-lucky gamblers who'll go all-in as soon as they get a pair of 5's, H.O.R.S.E brings together the most skilled poker players you'll meet anywhere all with sound strategies, patience, a healthy bank roll and a lot of experience and intuition. These players can be beaten just like anyone can, but to do this you need a sound strategy for each game and the patience to wait for a good hand to play. Odds in H.O.R.S.E are very different to the usual probability of single style games as the game changes at the end of every round. This means that in a weird kind of way every hand you play will feel like your first until you become a seasoned pro. 

5. H.O.R.S.E is not an easy way to make money and is a game for advanced poker players only. Don't enter a high stakes H.O.R.S.E tournament unless you can afford to never see that money again, until you get used to it play for free or very low stakes. H.O.R.S.E is a game of skill not luck.

6. You need to have an understanding of all five poker games but also you need to concentrate on your strengths. If Texas Hold'em is your game then focus on these hands and fold the ones where you're weak at the game. This is a reason you should practise Seven Card Stud because if you are proficient then you'll be proficient at 3 out of 5 hands of each round. You can quite easily fold one or two hands each round and avoid the weaker games to save your focus and bankroll on the games that you'll dominate.

7. In Texas Hold'em poker rounds of H.O.R.S.E watch for players who always call and never fold, playing each hand because it's the one they're the most familiar with. Just because they're familiar with it doesn't mean they're good players, so if they're calling and raising and then folding they're showing you they're desperate to win a hand. Next Texas Hold'em round these are the players to target with aggressive play.

8. In Omaha High / Low poker rounds of H.O.R.S.E watch the players constantly chasing either High or Low hands consistently. Remember that Omaha High / Low is the hardest one to pick up so being proficient in a H.O.R.S.E tournament will bring you among the few high ability players. If players raise as soon as a low card surfaces in the community card it means they're chasing a hand, if they already have three low cards they'd not be so bothered and would keep their call. In the early rounds watch these players and if they're the same ones who keep calling every hand in the Texas Hold'em round they're showing you weaknesses in their strategy and ability. These guys won't last into the later rounds so make it your mission to destroy them and claim their chips before one of the other bigger fish do. The bigger your bank roll in H.O.R.S.E the more you can relax in later rounds and fold the hands that you don't have to play and patiently watch the other players attack each other until only a few are left.

9. If you spot weak players in Seven Card Stud, then chances are they're even worse at Razz and Eight or Higher. Watch the players who call each betting round only to fold at the end when they've been dealt the last card of a weak hand. Stud uses no community cards, and although an easier game in a lot of ways, allows the players to relax and make crucial mistakes because they are not as mentally challenged as they are in rounds of Texas Hold'em and Omaha High / Low. Players who seem confused and inconsistent in Razz and Seven Card Stud rounds can be bullied in Eight or Higher rounds. First of all because the high / low split has made the game even more complicated, and secondly because they'll want to save their chips for the next round of Texas Hold'em.

10. These are the strategies I use in H.O.R.S.E so I hope you find them helpful. Remember you will be going head-to-head with strong poker players but everyone has a weakness. You can throw strong players off your scent by playing timidly in your strongest game, and then when they've taken the bait you can damage them. If players are playing slowly and making their minds up, use this time to decide your own strategy and in your turn play fast. If players are racing around the table, take your time and frustrate them. Set your own rhythm while disrupting the rhythm of others. If you play aggressive in one round of Omaha High / Low fold the next one, play the next one timidly and then switch back to aggressive. By the time it's time for you to switch back to playing aggressively the other players would have forgotten and would have started focusing on something else. Misdirection works wonders when people are already concentrating hard on something else. 


11. With anything to get very good you need to practice at least an hour a day. Regular H.O.R.S.E players are good and better than the average player but there are very few great H.O.R.S.E players, with hard work and regular practice you could be one of them! Practicing for hours upon hours with no direction, however, is counter productive. Begin, as always when you're learning a new game, by focusing on free games at low stakes and work your way up slowly as if you are lifting weights and trying to improve your bench press. If you're getting a daily workout you can increase the weight every fortnight, just like you can increase the stakes in poker once you have been consistently dominating the competition at the previous level. High stakes players on free play will generally be about the level of skill as players of low/medium stake cash games.


12. For advanced H.O.R.S.E players or complete maniacs. When I began playing Texas Hold'em years ago for money in Sit & Go's I started playing multiple tournaments at once. Never over four as four screens could fit nicely in the browser window, this way I was rarely bored between bad runs of low cards. Just for kicks after a while when I was practicing in Free Play I'd play two tables of Texas Hold'em and two tables of either 5 Card Draw or Seven Card Stud. I did this for a laugh at first, but quickly realized that it was sharpening my game up rapidly. I never did this on the real tables as I couldn't see how it would be any more profitable than playing four simultaneous games of Texas Hold'em, but loved the challenge none the less. If you stop pushing yourself as far as you can go you slow down and stagnate until something comes along and knocks you on your ass and wakes you up out of your day dream. This training I feel really helped me when years later I played my first H.O.R.S.E tournament as I was used to playing different games at different times. I would never advocate doing something as stupid as playing two or more simultaneous different games for money, but practice with your Free Play account and see how it goes. If nothing else it'll sharpen up your decision making and make it easier for you to adapt to different games.

All the best riding The H.O.R.S.E!

How many types of poker are there?

Well I guess the short answer is - HUNDREDS! Poker is a game that unlike other cards such as bridge, pontoon or cribbage, has constantly evolved. One reason for this is that countries of a different culture have their own variations. For the purpose of this article, however, we'll concentrate on the mainstream games that can be played online. Nearly all websites let you play Texas Hold'em, Omaha and 7 Card Stud, but some like PokerStars out do the competition with the sheer choice of different games and tournaments on offer. As I'm a member and a regular at the tables of PokerStars I've grown accustomed to these games but am nowhere near proficient in them all as I am Texas Hold'em. Now and again it's good to stretch and challenge yourself with a new game, otherwise how else are you going to develop and improve as a player. So lets start at the beginning...

What is Poker?

A poker game is played with 52 cards. There are four suits - Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs and Spades (when playing cards were first invented there was a fifth suit called Eagle but it never caught on) - and in each suit there are 13 cards running 2 to 10, with four court cards Jack, Queen, King and Ace. The Ace can be used as the highest / lowest card depending on what you are playing. In Texas Hold'em for instance there are 91 possible starting hands that you can be dealt, giving you a 1.09% chance of drawing a pair of Aces. It is often thought that the poker that we know today is a decedent of a 16th Century English card game called Primero.

The four types of poker played today are Straight poker (3 Card Brag), Stud poker (7 Card Stud, Razz), Draw poker (2-7 Triple Draw, 5 Card Draw) and Community card poker (Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Shanghai). As well as high card games, there are also 'lowball' and high / low variants. 

3 Card Brag Poker

3 Card Brag was made famous in recent years as the game that featured in London gangster film, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and is one of the purest forms of the original poker game that was played during the 1800s. In 3 Card Brag each player has a choice to see their cards or go blind, which is to bet against your opponents even though you don't know what you have. The betting continues until only two players are left, and the game goes head to head. The best possible hand is trips, then a pair and then high card. Although a popular game in some regions of the world, 3 Card Brag is not available online. Another name for this game is Blind Man's Bluff.

7 Card Stud Poker

In 7 Card Stud two face down cards are dealt to each player, while a third is dealt face up. There is a round of betting, and then a forth card is dealt to each player face up, then another bet, a fifth face up, another bet, a sixth face up, another bet and then finally a seventh face down. Each player now have four face cards and three hidden cards, and on the strength of these cards bet in the showdown to call and see each others cards. The highest 7 card hand wins. 7 Card Stud, although still popular, has mainly been replaced by Texas Hold'em in many online poker rooms. This classic can still be found at PokerStars.

Razz (Lowball) Poker

Razz is a version of 7 Card Stud where the lowest hand wins instead of the highest. In Razz

an Ace is a low card and counts as 1.

5 Card Draw Poker

In 5 Card Draw each player is dealt five cards that only they can see. After a round of betting each player in turn can opt to drop up to three cards and replace them with cards drawn from the deck. After another round of betting each player has one last drawing opportunity from the deck, and then everyone lays their final bets and show their cards. The winner is the player with the highest five card hand. A 7 Card Draw game is also available at most poker rooms where 5 Card Draw is offered, one of them being PokerStars.


2-7 Triple Draw Poker


2-7 Triple Draw is a low variant of 5 Card Draw where each player attempts to make the lowest hand of cards from 2 to 7 from three drawing rounds instead of two.

Texas Hold'em Poker


In Texas Hold'em each player receives two cards and after a round of betting, three face up community cards are laid out on the middle of the table, bets are made again, then a forth is laid down, after more betting, a fifth is laid down giving each player the opportunity of making the best five card hand from their two pocket cards and the five community cards. One or two of their pocket cards can be used with up to four of the community cards. These cards can be used by each player, which is where the biggest challenge in Texas Hold'em arises. Texas Hold'em is the biggest game online and can be found at all poker rooms in limit, pot limit and no-limit variations.


Shanghai Poker


Shanghai is a three card variant of Texas Hold'em where three cards are dealt to each player along with five community cards being placed in the middle, giving each player a total of eight cards to make up the highest five card hand. Shanghai is rare to find but can be found at PokerStars.

Omaha Poker


Omaha goes one better than Shanghai Poker, with each player being dealt four cards, along with five community cards. The difference with Omaha however, is that the rules are stricter. Exactly two cards of your four pocket cards must be used along with exactly three of the five community cards, which means making flushes and straights more difficult. 


Omaha High / Low Poker


In this variation of Omaha the pot is split between the player holding the highest hand and the player holding the lowest. The lowest hand must contain cards 8 or under, and an Ace is used as a low card making Kings the highest card in Omaha High / Low.  

Texas Hold'em Poker vs Omaha High / Low Poker

One question I get asked a lot both as a freelance sports journalist and as a professional poker player myself is - 'so what's the best poker game Texas Hold'em or Omaha High / Low?' It's kind of an odd question really because it's like making a sweeping statement that baseball is better that cricket or whether Karate is better than Tae Kwon Do. It depends a lot on personal preference;  even though I'm English I'd watch baseball over cricket any day of the week and I'm not a fan of Karate or Tae Kwon Do as I think Muay Thai kickboxing is far superior as a martial art. So instead of having to explain how Texas Hold'em and Omaha High / Low are different, in future I'll just refer the person to my blog. 

What is Texas Hold'em Poker?

I think it'd be fair to say that when most people think of poker nowadays, it's Texas Hold'em they think about. It's the game the pros play on televised tournaments and the game that you can play at any online poker room that takes your fancy. Although over this side of the pond in Europe, Texas Hold'em poker has only been dominant since 2003, back in the good old US of A it's been played in the World Series of Poker since the early 70s. It's a fast game and when playing online somewhere like PokerStars, EuroPoker or 888Poker, you can easily play 60 to 80 hands an hour if you know what you're doing. For anyone who has ever played 5 Card Draw or Seven Card Stud poker, you know it'd be impossible to play so many hands an hour in those games. 

In Texas Hold'em each player is dealt a pair of cards, and based on the strength of these two cards they can either bet, raise or fold. Three cards are then dealt to the middle of the table face up, giving each player the chance to make the best hand they can out of the five cards (three in the middle and their pocket pair). After either checking, betting, raising or re-raising a single forth card is added to the three in the middle, where everyone bets again, and then a final card is dealt. This gives the table five cards, and with a pocket pair, each player has seven cards to make the highest five card hand that they can. The winner gets the pot and the cards are dealt again. As far as poker games go Texas Hold'em has got to be one of the most exciting and easy to pick up for beginners. Although being dealt only two cards at first seems strange, after a while they are more than enough to make up a vast array of winning hands. 

What is Omaha High / Low Poker?

First of all just so I don't mislead anyone there are different variants of Omaha poker. Regular Omaha poker or Omaha High as it is sometimes called rewards the player with the highest hand with the pot. Omaha High / Low, which is the subject today, is a game where the pot is split between the highest (best hand) and the lowest (worst hand), and just before you get all excited about finding a game that finally rewards those who suck at poker, it's really not that simple! A low hand must be made up of five cards that are 8 or lower, if no-one holds an 8 or lower hand, then the high hand wins the entire pot.

In Omaha High / Low each player is dealt four cards that only they can see. Betting rounds and community cards (cards placed in the middle of the table) progress exactly as they do in Texas Hold'em. The final hand of each player is made up of exactly two of the player's own cards and exactly three of the five community cards. So a player trying to win with a high hand split would pick their two best cards and put them together with the three best cards on the table; the player going for a low hand split would pick their two lowest cards and put them together with the three lowest cards on the table. An Ace card in Omaha High / Low is seen as the lowest card, and the King as the highest, as an example of this the best hand possible for a low split is A-2-3-4-5. Only using two of your cards and only three of the community cards stumps beginners who think they have a straight or a flush but then realize they can't make the hand using only two of their cards. In Omaha High / Low a pair or a trip will lose to a hand without every time. 

The Best Game?

Well in short there isn't one. Texas Hold'em is easy to learn, fast paced and pretty straight forward for anyone who has ever played 5 Card Draw or 7 Card Stud before. It offers several rounds of betting and allows the player the freedom to use one or two of their pocket pair to make their best hand, it's a good game for tight / loose / passive / aggressive play and allows for heavy bluffing if you know what you are doing. Due to it being so popular there are a lot of  bad players and hardcore gamblers so at 60-80 hands an hour a lot of money can be made fast if you know what you're doing. Being good at Texas Hold'em allows you to gain experience before you enter freerolls, sit-n-go tournaments and power tournaments, and being able to play so many games in such a short space of time allows good players to improve rapidly and become great.

Omaha High / Low on the other hand is a game with a much slower pace that many poker players find difficult to adapt to because it lacks the fast paced adrenaline rush excitement of a Hold'em table. This being the case of a less popular game, many more of the players you meet will be of a higher ability than the ones you meet in Hold'em. The Omaha High / Low split pot, however, gives you double the chance of winning if you know what you are doing and what you are looking for which means bigger pots and more money to be made. Omaha is more strategic and the strategies of Texas Hold'em could damage you in Omaha High / Low. Although they are similar in many ways, these two games are completely different animals.

If you are new to the world of online poker and like to gamble, bluff and enjoy the thrill of tournaments then Texas Hold'em is for you. However, if you are a player with a lot of experience, a sound strategic mind and the patience to wait for a big pot pay out then Omaha High / Low might just be the thing you are looking for. From experience I can tell you that it takes some getting used to and personally Texas Hold'em is my game, but now and again a game of Omaha High / Low can really stretch your ability, slow the pace and in a weird kind of way feels more satisfying when you win a big pot because you've had to work harder for it.

Playing poker with a religious extremist

Playing @ VIP Poker

...it's around 11am and I'm hungry but there's not too much in the house. There's this great coffee shop down the road that does the best Full English breakfasts - sausages, bacon, eggs, beans, waffles, black pudding and friend mushrooms. They do a great cup of coffee too, so I finish what I'm doing and have a stroll down. While I'm waiting for my food and drinking my Americano I check my emails and FaceBook on my iPhone, then check in for a few hands of poker at VIP Poker. It's an app just like Zynga Poker with a lot of similarities, and I play at both these sites as well as Pokerist for fun and practice for the real thing. My goal is usually to work my way up to $1,000,000 chips from just a few thousand by playing regular poker and no tournaments. The reason I do this is that it teaches me to be careful with my money and to play focused even when I'm relaxed. If you loosen up and make stupid bets in practice you can get into bad habits and make expensive mistakes when you play for real. I'm a perfectionist and there's no such thing as too much practice, you can always be better than you are.

I'm in a $500/$1000 room which is much higher stakes than I ever play for real. The most I'll even go to is $2/$4 because the risk is lower and I can make a comfortable living from playing small stakes. At the most I maybe risk $200 a day, but have usually doubled if not tripled my initial stake after an hour of so. It's not uncommon for me to be $1000 in profit by the end of the day, often it's more than that. If you use your knowledge, experience, intuition and you make the right decisions the cards will be on your side. I know people who play for much higher stakes than I do but I figure unless you need to, why risk more than you have to?

Anyway I'm in this room and there's this guy called Christian777; at first I think it's his name not his religious orientation. Then a girl joins the table with an avatar photograph of her in a bikini posing by a pool. Straight away the morons on the table are saying 'hi' and 'how r u' to her, which works in my favor because the more they're looking at her the less they're looking at their cards. This Christian777 guy though is different, he starts abusing her over chat calling her 'slut', 'whore' and the other usual insults. Repressed much?!

The girl ignores him and gets on with her game but this guy won't let it go, so I take him on head to head. On the river I have three kings which is good enough for me against a guy who is checking instead of betting because he's too busy spitting bile at some girl he doesn't even know. I go all in and he takes the bait and he's gone. Silence at last, but then he returns with a new stake and starts the abuse again. The other players catch on and start betting tough against him too because he's so irate and not thinking straight. We keep bankrupting him and he keeps coming back in the game with more money to shout abuse and lose even more chips.

By the time my food arrived the girl in the bikini had made $17000 profit and moved to another table, and the religious extremist had been bankrupt and come back eight times. Some people just don't learn, and it dawned on me as I began to eat that if the guy was so religious in the first place what the f**k was he doing in a poker room gambling in the first place.

The Right Place @ The Right Time

Playing @ Zynga Poker

...so I'm playing a few hands of Zynga Poker while eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked Mackerel and washing it down with a pot of green tea. To be exact it's not green tea at all, it's Yerba Mate tea from the amazon, full of antioxidants, amino acids, trace minerals and a healthy boost of caffeine to get the brain firing first thing in the morning. It was a late one last night. I was playing a couple of tournaments on PokerStars with the awesome movie Inception on in the background, the forth time I've watched it and I love the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.

I'm on a $50/$100 table and I'm one of four players which I'm pretty much dominating; so much so that I'm about $3000 up and I've only been playing for ten minutes. I'm thinking its part to do with the fact I'm awesome at poker but also got something to do with the fact these three lads are from the USA and it's about 3am over there. 9 times out of 10 a player who has just woken from eight hours sleep will be a lot more switched on to a poker game than someone who hasn't slept in 18 hours and is going off to bed soon. The other thing is Zynga Poker is a free website where people play for fun, so people are pretty loose and easy going with fake money. You can buy $120,000 for 69p but why would you pay actual money for fake money? It's totally stupid. If you want to invest in poker, play real poker at PokerStars or EuroPoker. Some players on Zynga Poker are Pro $5,000,000 but their balance shows that they only have $10,000 in the bank. That means this moron is so loose with his money that he's lost $4,990,000 of fake cash which is the equivalent of nearly £50 real money. Don't get me wrong Zynga Poker is one of my favourite websites that I practise strategies on and meet up with friends on FaceBook, but some of the people you meet are real stupid. They want to brag about being a fake millionaire like it makes them good at poker in real life.

This morning was the perfect example. I'm $7000 up and bankrupt one of my adversaries. So the remaining three of us are playing when some random girl from Thailand enters the table with $35,000 and goes all in on the first hand. The other two fold and just for the sheer hell of it I call her, the chances of her having a winning hand on the first round are remote so the odds are in my favor. Big surprise I beat her high card Ace with two pair. She leaves the table and then instantly is back with another $35,000. She goes all in again, and I see her, collecting another $35,000. The third time she does this I fold as sooner or later the odds are going to be in her favor and I'm already $70,000 in profit after 45 seconds of play. I decide to say goodbye to the table and leave. 

Poker after all is a game of probability and sometimes winning means being in the right place at the right time... even if you are playing for fake chips.