It is common that before the beginning of a poker game someone refers to the burn card. It is a term that mentions a card that is precisely the protagonist at the beginning of each round in poker games and that also implies the dealer’s action.
Let’s delve a little deeper into the concept of the burn card and the importance it has in poker games.
Burn card: everything you need to know
The term “burn card” refers to the card in the poker deck that is placed face down and discarded to ensure the “purity” of the deck and give players the guarantee that the deck is not rigged and that the cards will be dealt in a natural way.
The appearance of the burn card dates back to a time when poker was played in the back rooms of the locals with no security measures. At that time, cheating was common and the dynamics of the games at the organizational level had nothing to do with it.
One of the most common traps in poker was to manipulate the deck to know in advance which cards were dealt to each player, making it look like luck the good cards that were dealt to a particular player. Since that started to be popular, the measure of discarding the first card was taken to break the order of the deck and start dealing guaranteeing the purity of the cards.
Since then, removing the first card from the deck has become synonymous with security and guarantee, and remains to this day despite the extreme security measures in place to prevent any cheating or trickery from tarnishing the authenticity of the game.
The manipulation of the deck before these tricks were detected usually involved the mechanic who handled the deck. The mechanics were croupiers skilled in sleight-of-hand techniques, who could manipulate the top and bottom of the deck without being discovered with extreme ease. The creation of the burn card was born as part of a strategy to counteract the traps based on the manipulation of the deck.
So, what is the burn card? It is a card that is never played, whose only purpose is to cover and protect the cards that come after it. The card is removed, kept face down and the dealing begins.
What is the role of burn cards in poker?
These cards serve a single purpose: to prevent cheating. By keeping the following cards covered, burn cards make it possible to guarantee that there has been no manipulation and that the cards that are dealt have not been purposely changed in position.
Depending on the variety of poker played and the characteristics of the game, there may be more than one burn card. For example, in Hold’em flop games, three cards are usually burned before the hand is over. The first burn card is burned preflop, the second before the turn and the third before the river.
Other modalities, such as 7 Card Stud games, burn up to four cards, one burn card for each street starting with the fourth. These cards, on the other hand, always remain covered and out of the muck.
And what happens if, in the course of a flop game, the dealer discovers a card in the initial deal? In such cases, the deal is completed and then the exposed card is replaced by the burn card. The uncovered card is placed face up on the top of the deck so that the players can see it, and is in turn used to cover the rest of the cards in the deck, protecting the deck.
Therefore, the uncovered cards are usually treated in the same way as the burned card. When betting is over, before the next cards are dealt, the exposed burn card is placed in the burn pile face down.
The role, therefore, of the burn cards is always the same. It is a method that guarantees all players to obtain pure, covered cards that have not been exposed or moved on purpose. If the dealer does not remove the burn card, any of the players has the right to demand that the burn card be set aside and cancel the dealing of the cards.
Although nowadays there are more than enough mechanisms to prevent cheating, it never hurts to maintain the custom of removing the burn card to provide users with the assurance that the cards have not been tampered with.