Posted in Poker August 30th, 2008
Texas Hold’em Basics: How to start playing Texas Hold’em Poker
Playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker is simple. Trouble is, whilst it’s simple to play, it’s not actually easy to play and win. You can learn the basic rules quickly and easily. But the strategies involved aren’t as easy. The best way to learn is to get a quick guide to the card values and betting rounds, then start playing.
When you start playing, make sure it’s for money. Although all the main poker sites offer free games, these aren’t played the same way as real money games (think how often you “gamble” when you watch a quiz show on television versus how the people playing for money change). Keep a close eye on how game play changes with the number of players as well. The winner of each round is the player with the highest hand and your aim should be to bet more on your better hands.
Of course, all the other players in your game are also playing to win as well!
Sometimes you’ll be forced to bet – these bets are called “blinds” and the two players to the left of the dealers have to place these bets. Each game has a minimum level for these blinds and in a tournament the blinds will increase as play progresses.
For each round of betting, you need to decide what to do. You can “call” the bet, which means that you match it or you can “raise” the bet to a higher amount (normally a raise has to be at least as much as the big blind amount) or you can decide to “fold” and leave this round of the game to the other players.
The betting progresses clockwise around the table until every player has decided what to do. Once this has happened, the dealer burns a card (not literally – it’s just placed face down along with any other discarded cards) and then they deal the “flop”, which comprises three cards dealt face up.
Once again, there is a round of betting for all the players left in this particular game. This time the players can choose to “check” (which means they will don’t want to place a bet and is only available if no-one before them in this betting round has placed a bet), bet an amount at least equal to the big blind or fold their hand.
After the betting on the flop has finished, the dealer burns another card and then deals a fourth community card, called the “turn” card. Betting proceeds as before.
Finally, the dealer burns another card and then deals the final community card of the round. This is called the “river” card. Then the final betting round begins.
Once the final betting round has finished, the winner of the round can be decided. If there’s only one player left then they get the pot. But if two or more players are left then they have to turn their cards face up so that the winner can be decided. This is normally the player who has the highest hand and if only only player has the highest hand, they win the pot.
Since all suits are of equal value, it is possible for two or more of the remaining players to have the same value hand. If this is the case, the pot is shared equally between them.
If you’d like to start earning money from your Texas Hold’em games and learn the strategies used by the professional online players, check out this site:
http://learnaboutpoker.org/sitngo.html
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
