The Poker shape is one of my favourite pipe. It is featured by a bowl which is a perfect cylinder with a flat bottom. The round shank meets the bowl nearly to the bottom. I am used to consider a Poker, a "real Poker" only if the pipe stand on its own with a full or empty bowl. The original Poker shape (with cylindric bowl) is made both with taper and saddled stem, but also with Army Mount style.
The Poker is one of the shape where the pipemaker could express his full creativeness starting from a classic shape. We can find a lot of variation of the original them: the shape of the bowl could take a freeform shape or could be canted.
When the bowl is canted but it keeps its cylindric shape, with a flat bottom, the shape is called Cherrywood (even if it is not really made with cherry wood). The shank meets the bowl with an angle of 90°, but the result of the shape that we keep in the mouth is a lightly bent pipe. Even in this case the pipe stand on its own when placed on a table.
The Poker shape takes its name from the cards play. It was probably created to allow smokers to play cards leaving the pipe on the table without any kind of problem.

CONNECTED SHAPES

The basical shape is the Straight Classical Billiard, with cylindrical bowl and round shank.