It depends..
this poker game, is it an applet, for the net?
either way, by outputting the value to a file, and storing it somewhere should do the job.
Simply create a file with the variable (or whatever) in it, then read from the file next time, and retrieve the value from it.
For code to read/write to files, go to:
www.javaalmanac.com
and search "file".
Good luck,
Rob Darkins.
rob_darkins@hotmail.com