There are lots and lots of poker jokes, but really only three kinds of poker jokes.
There are the only-funny-to-kids pun type jokes:
Why shouldn’t you play poker in the jungle?
Too many cheetahs.
Why does the queen play poker on the toilet?
So she can get a royal flush.
There is an “adult” pun-based joke about needing a partner or a good hand that surely started out as a bridge joke. When you see that one in a list of “poker jokes,” some poker joker must have hijacked it (see what I did there?).
There are lots of jokes about poker players being losers.
Man comes home at 4:00 a.m. and his wife says, “where have you been all night? It better not have been playing poker.
“Playing poker,” he answers.
“That’s it. That’s the last straw. Get out of my house right now!” the wife snarls.
“Sure, I’ll leave.” the poker player agrees. “But I hate to have to tell you that it’s not your house anymore.“
That joke also belongs in the poker players being jerks to their family category:
A man calls his father and asks for twelve hundred dollars. “I hate to bother you, Pops, but my wife needs a surgery and they want the co-pay up front.”
The father knows his grown-up boy well and says, “Come on, son. You’ll just spend that money on poker.”
“You got me all wrong, Dad.” the poker player says. “I already got my money for poker.”
My favorite joke is one that mocks the poker player mentality from the standpoint of a civilian.
A poker player and her husband go to a casino so the poker player can play poker and the husband can go play them expensive kids games in the rest of the casino. You know the ones that take the sacred tools of the holy game of poker and turn them into mathematical grinds for people who think math don’t apply to them?
The poker player gives the husband his allotted three hundred dollars, suppressing annoyance at having to use part of her poker bankroll for such a foolish activity as gambling. ‘I hope he drinks part of it so all don’t go to waste,’ she thinks.
Anyways, the husband runs out of his money pretty fast rolling the bones, counting the cards, bucking the tiger, backin’ the rat, or whatever they call those glorified three card monte games. “Lady luck is against me tonight, the naive non-poker player thinks.
Meanwhile, his wife, the poker player is down four hundred thirty-five dollars which she understands is just variance and she has to ride it out. The husband asks the poker player for another three hundred dollars or he wants to go home.
She offers two hundred and to her surprise, he sits down and buy in for a hundred big blinds. He barely knows the rules!
Naturally, he loses it quickly. The poker player is still card dead, so she can’t even win it back herself. She stares daggers at the two other regulars at the table who clean him out.
On the ride home, the poker player says, “I don’t wanna know what you did with the first three hundred. But I can tell you . . . you just wasted that last two hundred trying to play poker.”
What?” the husband asks. “You lost over seven hundred dollars on poker.”
“That’s different,” said the poker player. “I know how to play!”
Try explaining to a civilian why the poker player is right in that story.