is poker considered a sport and how many poker style are there?

I would not consider poker a sport even though it is shown on sports channels. It is definately still gambling. As for the 5 card games there are an unlimited number of them. There is stud, where you simply have the hand that you are dealt. People play this in both 5 and 7 card varity. 5 card is much harder becuase you are simply left to the luck of the deal. Where 7 you get a couple more chances to make a better hand. Then there are games where all kinds of things are wild cards. I have played duces wild, where the 2's are the wild cards. People play duces, aces and one eyed faces, where 2's, A's and any face card with one eye showing is wild. Then you have follow the queen and that is where any card that follows a queen is wild. This one gets a little tricky as to what the wild card really is. But in all of these games each player is dealt a hand not just the down cards.

Well, there are certain types of player characterization such as: loose-aggressive, hyper-aggressive, loose-passive, and tight-aggressive. Such characterizations allows a player to construct playing profiles and adapt their style of playing to exploit their oppenents tendencies at the table. As for poker being considered simply as gambling, I would disagree. The game of poker as become highly analyzed in recent years. Principles of Game Theory (a branch of mathematics) are now being applied and successfully utilitzed by a variety players now.

To me a sport is anything where athletics are involved. Therefore poker is not considered a sport as far as I am concerned. In fact, I am baffled why anyone would want to watch people play it on television but I guess everyone has what entertains them so yeah. Still to call it a sport would be a bit of an insult to the athletes of actual sports. Because, really does the term poker athlete really have any direct application? No, I thought not. Poker is a competition and one that is spreading quite a bit. Still, not a sport. Of course, I do not consider NASCAR much of a sport either and people get gravely offended about that. And people do consider poker to be very serious business like many sports. However, it is not athletic so it is not a sport. I consider it competition or gambling and that's all I have to say about that.