The Chinese Poker is a poker game that is very popular in Hong Kong, parts of the Southeast Asia and it can also be found in United States of America. While this game can never reach the popularity of Texas Holdem it still manages to bring the attention of poker players because only a basic knowledge of poker hand rankings is needed to get started and game offer plenty of good poker action.
In Chinese Poker, each from up to four players, receives a 13 card hand from a standard 52 card deck. The main objective that you must have in mind when playing the Chinese Poker version is to make sure that you arrange any of the 13 cards into 3 different poker hands (known as "setting"). Two of the hands must be made out of 5 cards (known as "the middle" and "the back") and one of the hands will be made out of only 3 cards (known as "the front"). "The back" must be the highest ranking hand, and "the front", the lowest ranking hand. The standard poker ranking is used in Chinese Poker: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pairs, one pair, high card. The objective will be to bet the corresponding poker hands that are made by your opponents.
The gameplay of the Chinese Poker game is very simple, but at the same time it will require a lot of concentration in order to make sure that you are utilizing the cards properly to take out the best hands that could possibly beat those of your opponents.
Just like any online poker game out there, you will get the chance to find a very good number of variations out there that will offer you basically the same game rules but there will be a twist that is sometimes able to make the game more attractive.
Playing the Chinese Poker game can be a lot of fun and even if you are not going to play it for real money it can still be a very interesting way to train yourself for playing other types of poker games.