Texas Hold’Em Poker – The Quick Start Guide

Texas Hold ‘em has fast become the most popular variation of poker at casinos, TV tournaments, and even poker night at the friend’s house. Poker is a betting game, and betting plays a large part in the strategy of the game, it’s not just a reward for winning the hand. You use betting as a tool to scare people into folding, to throw them off the cards in your hand, to thin a few players off the table to increase your odds of getting beat by bad luck, and various other tactics that will become aware to you as you go along. Poker is also a game of player versus player, there is no house to beat.

There are two betting types of hold’em; Fixed Limit and No-Limit. You will come across both in online poker rooms. Simply put, fixed limit poker has fixed betting limits that you must play. If you play at a $1/$2 table this means the maximum allowed bet in the first two rounds is $1 and in the final two rounds is $2. These rules also apply to any raises. A no-limit table means just that; there are no betting limits. There are no betting limits and you can raise your entire pot every bet if you wished. Fixed limit is less popular than no-limit, and you won’t see it on TV tournaments, but if you are still learning the game it can help keep you out of betting trouble since you can’t be drawn into large bets by other players.

The game starts by each player receiving two cards that are only seen by them. The initial round of betting then ensues, where you will place bets based on the two cards in your hand. A bit of advice, don’t be afraid to fold. If your two cards do not give you a decent opportunity to produce a winning hand, fold it. What you don’t see at the WSOP (World Series of Poker) is they have to fold, fold, fold, usually 4 out of 5 times to get to that one exciting hand that you’ll see on camera. After the first round of betting, 3 additional cards are dealt face up in the center of the table that serve as “community” cards, that each player will use to combine with their two private cards to create the best possible poker hand. (Poker hand rankings are the same for all types of poker and can be found with a simple Google search) The 3 card turnover is commonly referred to as the “flop”. The second round of betting begins after the flop, where players will start to have an idea of how good or bad their hand might be. You still have two more community cards coming, but if your hand is not starting to shape up by now, you should think about folding it. After the second round of betting, 1 card is dealt to the community cards, followed by a third round of betting. The fifth and final community card is dealt, followed by the last round of betting. The final community card is commonly referred to as “the river”, and you should generally try to not rely on this card to complete your hand. You will have to endure 3 rounds betting to see the last card, so you should have a pretty solid hand to take it all the way.

That’s it! You’re playing Texas Hold’em. There are several free sites out there you can play at to become familiar with the game before hitting any casinos, or getting taken at a friend’s house. One thing to keep in mind on the free sites is that players usually play with a different mindset with free money than they do with real money. As you could imagine they bet a little more freely since it doesn’t cost them anything and if you run out of virtual chips, they just give you more. Therefore some people will bet just about every time no matter what. Practice, practice, practice and you’ll be on your way to enjoying one of the most entertaining poker games out there.

John Chilton is co-founder of Platypus PC Inc.

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