There are three main variations of poker; mainly grouped by the procedure of card-dealing and betting. There namely are Straight, Stud, Draw and Community.

A straight is the oldest poker variation and is currently played in the game, Three-card brag. It is when a complete hand is dealt to each player and players bet in one round, with raising and re-raising allowed.

A Stud is when the cards are dealt in a prearranged combination of face-down and face-up rounds with a round of betting followed. The stud emerged at a variant when poker progressed from three to five cards. The most popular form is Seven-card stud.

A Draw is when a complete hand is dealt to each player, face-down, and after betting, players are permitted to try to change their hand by discarding unwanted cards and being dealt new ones. Five-card draw is a good example of this variant.

A Community is a variation of Stud, players are dealt an incomplete hand of face-down cards, and then a number of face-up "community" cards are dealt to the center of the table, each of which can be used by one or more of the players to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold'em and Omaha are two examples.

Other poker variations include strip poker, video poker and Red Dog poker.