Dealer’s Choice is a variation of Poker that can be hard to find at desktop and mobile casinos, but it is popular among home versions of the game. With Poker variants like Texas Hold’em drawing millions of viewers when major tournaments in famous casinos are televised internationally, home Poker clubs are springing up all over, as friends get together to play socially.
The relaxed and convivial nature of these sessions, often for low stakes, makes Dealer’s Choice a fun option for home Poker games. The all-powerful dealer button is the key; in both online and land-based casinos, as well as home games, the button used to designate the dealer moves one player left on each deal. Dealer’s Choice allows whoever has the button to decide what form of Poker will be played on the next deal, or on the next round of deals.
Three Basic Poker Categories
In casinos and home games, Poker now comes in hundreds of different variations; some including wild cards, others with pool cards shared between all the players, and even multi-hand versions. However, there are three basic categories into which all the different versions of Poker can be grouped.
Stud games are those in which players must play the cards they are dealt. This means finding the best Poker combination from the number of cards dealt, which is usually five or seven. Players cannot see any of each other’s cards, so assessing the strength of a hand in isolation, and bluffing and betting accordingly, are required skills.
Draw Poker usually involves a five-card hand, but players can discard some cards and draw others, hoping for stronger combinations. Community card Poker is the third category: players are dealt a number of individual hole cards face down, and a number of community cards are dealt onto the board, which all players can combine with their hole cards to make winning combinations.
Playing to Each Dealer’s Strength
The big attraction of playing Dealer’s Choice is that dealers each get a chance to play to their own strengths. Five-Card Stud is perhaps the most difficult form of Poker; players are dealt five cards with no draws, and they must bet the hand as it stands. In a format where Ace-high could well be a winning hand, players need an excellent understanding of the odds relating to a 52-card deck. When strong combinations come up, it takes subtle betting against the chancers and bluffers to build a big pot.
In a community card game like Texas Hold’em, on the other hand, being able to read other players and their responses to each new card on the board is essential to success. In Draw Poker games, the odds influence the number of cards a player should draw, and the number of cards each opponent draws is also information about the strength of their hands. Dealer’s Choice allows each player the chance to play the version in which they have most experience, whenever they get the dealer button like gamblers who choose the option of Canadian online Keno.
Common-Sense Rules Facilitate Play
The one obvious essential to a Dealer’s Choice Poker session is that all the players understand all the Poker versions that the dealer has to choose from. For this reason, it is best to list the choices available, and ensure all players are familiar with them, and then restrict dealers only to variants on the list. Popular inclusions are Texas Hold’em, Deuces Wild, Seven-Card Stud and Five-Card Draw, although non-Poker games like Guts or Acey Deucey can also liven up the selection.