Overview:

Texas Hold-Em is a 7 card poker game that uses 2 private, or “hole”, cards per player and 5 shared, or “community” cards that are placed face up in the center of the table and are used by everyone in the hand. Players make their best 5 card poker hand out of the 7 total cards available. Players can use both, one, or none of their hole cards to make a hand.

The hand strength rankings in Hold-Em are standard poker strength rankings as follows, from lowest to highest strengths:

[1] High card (single highest card, e.g. would give a King-high hand)
[2] One pair (a card in your hand is of the same rank as another card, e.g. )
[3] Two pairs (2 cards in your hand are the same rank as 2 other cards, e.g. )
[4] 3-of-a-kind (3 cards of the same rank, e.g. )
[5] Straight (5 sequential cards, e.g. )
[6] Flush (5 cards of the same suit, e.g. )
[7] Full house (3 of a kind and a pair, e.g. )
[8] 4-of-a-kind (4 cards, the same rank, e.g. )
[9] Straight flush (5 cards of the same suit in sequence, e.g. )
[10] Royal flush (5 cards of the same suit in sequence, but using the A,K,Q,J,10 cards only, e.g. )

Betting Basics

At every betting opportunity, each player has 3 options: If a person has bet before them, the player can throw his hand away (“fold”), decide to play the hand and match the bet (“call”), or decide to increase the amount bet (“raise”). In some cases, nobody will have bet when it is your turn to act. If that happens, the player has a 4th option. He can continue with the hand without putting additional money in by saying “check”. If there is a bet after the player checks, he has to fold, call, or raise the bet. If there is no bet, the player can see the next card.

There are 2 main types of Hold-Em games from a betting perspective – fixed limit and big bet.

In a fixed limit game, the amount you can bet on any round is fixed by the game stakes. For instance, in a $2/$4 fixed limit game, you can bet or raise exactly $2 when you get your cards, exactly $2 on the flop, exactly $4 on the turn, and exactly $4 on the river. All the betting increments happen in fixed amounts.

For example, at a $2/$4 game, you look down at your cards and see AA. You want to raise to protect your hand. A person on front of you calls $2 to match the big blind. You would say “raise” and then put $4 out - $2 to match the existing bet and $2 for the raise. Because this hypothetical $2/$4 game is fixed limit, you can not raise more or less than $2 on the first 2 rounds, or $4 on the last 2 rounds.

There are 2 types of big bet games – pot limit and no limit. The main difference between the two is that in pot limit, you can not bet/raise more than the size of the pot at the point of the bet. In no limit, there is no cap on what you can bet.

For the sake of simplicity, we will only consider no limit for this overview. In no limit, the amount you can bet on any round is determined by the number of chips you have and the size of the previous bet. There is no cap on the amount you can bet, and the only rule is that any raise you make has to be at least as big as the bet you are raising. (e.g. somebody bets $10 and you want to raise, the minimum bet you could make would be $20 ($10 to match the initial bet, and $10 to make the raise). You could bet a lot more than $20 if you wanted to, but the minimum would be $20.

One point comes up in both games, but it is significantly more prevalent in no limit. In Hold-Em, you are entitled to action on all the chips you have in play on the table, but nothing beyond that. If you have $50 left on the table and somebody bets $1000, you don’t have to go to your pocket for $950 to call. In truth, you can’t put additional money on the table after the cards have been dealt, so this rule cuts both ways. You can call with the $50 you have left. Now, obviously you aren’t entitled to any of the $1000 beyond the $50 you could cover, but you can get action on your full stake. Similarly, the rule that the raise must match the pervious bet doesn’t apply if you are putting all your chips in (“going all-in”). If you had $87 left and somebody bet $50 and you wanted to raise, you could put your last $37 in the pot and it would be a legitimate raise.

Game Mechanics:

The responsibility for dealing the cards passes from player to player around the table in a clockwise fashion. In a game with a professional dealer who deals every hand, the “deal” passes around the table in the form of a dealer button. While the professional dealer actually deals each hand, the player with the dealer button gets dealt his cards last and has the opportunity of acting last on each betting round, which is an important advantage we will discuss later.

To stimulate betting action, Hold-em contains 2 forced bets that rotate around the table with the deal. These bets are called “blind” bets because the players must make them before they even see their hole cards. They merit a little more discussion.

The player on the immediate left of the dealer is called the small blind. The player to the small blind’s immediate left is called the big blind. The absolute amounts of the blind bets depend on the betting level of the game you are playing. The blinds in a $3/$6 limit game would be different than the blinds in a $4/$8 limit game. As a general rule, the big blind is the size of the smaller of the 2 bet sizes for the limit you are playing. In other words, in a $2/$4 game, the big blind would be $2. In a $4/$8 game, the big blind would be $4. The small blind is half the size of the big blind.

Each hand, the blinds for that hand post their bets. Then the dealer deals each player 2 cards, one at a time around the table starting with the small blind.

Because the blinds have, in essence, already bet before the cards are dealt once every player has their cards, the first round of betting (called “Pre-flop”)starts with the player on the left of the big blind (often referred to as “under the gun”). To offset the disadvantage of posting a blind bet, the blinds are considered “live” bets, which means that the blinds get an option to bet or raise after all the other player have acted.

The betting passes around the table in a clockwise direction until everyone has either folded or called all the bets and raises that have been made. Once everyone has called all the bets/raises made in the pre-flop round, the dealer will deal 3 cards for the flop and place them face up in the center of the table. Now the flop round of betting begins. This time, the betting starts with the small blind or, if he has folded, with the first player with cards remaining to the left of the dealer button.

Once everyone call any bets or raises made on this round, the dealer will deal the turn card, have another round of betting, and then deal the river card with a final round of betting.

If at any time, a player makes a bet or raise which nobody calls (everyone folds), that player wins the pot and is not obligated to show their cards. If 2 or more players still have cards after the betting round on the river card, then they go to showdown. The player who bet last shows his cards and the table determines his hand. The player who called can choose to show or not if his hand is weaker and is therefore a loser. However, if his hand is tied or stronger, he must show his cards as well. The dealer will determine who won the hand and push the pot to the correct player.

House edge

The house doesn’t have a direct edge in poker. The game is played among the players. To make the game profitable for the card room, they will extract a fee for the use of the table. The most common fee is called rake. In essence, the house takes a portion of every pot up to a pre-determined maximum. The rake happens during each betting round and at the end of each hand, the dealer drops the rake into a collection box.

In some cases, for certain games, card rooms choose to charge for time, rather than rake the pots. This is prevalent in no limit, especially higher stakes no limit, and in cases where the maximum rake is capped by law. In a time charge game, every 30 minutes you have to pay to continue playing. The house no longer rakes the pot.

Sitting in a game

The first consideration is how much money you want to play for. In general, a standard buy-in for a limit game is 25 times the big bet for the game. For example, in a $2/$4 game, you would typically buy in for $100.

In a no-limit game, you generally buy in for 100x the big blind size. Don’t panic, though, since the big blinds in no limit are smaller than limit games for similar skill levels. A $2/$4 game is small stakes limit poker, but medium stakes for a no limit game. You will almost always be able to find small stakes no limit games ($1/$2) in your local casinos.

Very often, the card house has rules about minimum and maximum buy-ins for different game levels to make it easier for beginning players to find a level in their comfort zone, so the 100x rule is not hard and fast, but it is a good guideline.

To get into a live game, you will usually have to put your name on a game list. Card rooms have a staff member called “the brush” who takes names and assigns players to tables. Ask the brush to put your name on the list for the game or games you want to play and then wait for your name to be called. They will direct you to your table. You can get chips before you sit, or in many room you can use a chip runner or buy chips at the table.

Conclusion

Hold-em is a very easy game to learn and play, but can take a very long time to master the finer details that go into making somebody a winning player. We’ll cover some of the details and strategies to help you get started playing in other articles.

Steve @ Power Poker Course.




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