Texas Hold'em Rules for People Who've Never Played
Enough to play a hand without embarrassing yourself
Staff Writer · · 3 min read
Poker looks more complicated than it actually is. The rules of Texas Hold'em fit comfortably in one page, and everything else that people find intimidating is strategy rather than rules.
Here's enough to sit down and play.
The basic shape
Every player gets two private cards, and five shared cards are dealt face up in the middle over the course of the hand. You make the best five card hand you can using any combination of your two cards and the five shared ones.
That's the whole game, and everything else is just a question of when the betting happens.
Hand rankings, best to worst
Royal flush. Ten through Ace, all the same suit.
Straight flush. Five in a row, all the same suit.
Four of a kind. Four cards of the same rank.
Full house. Three of one rank, two of another.
Flush. Five of the same suit, in any order.
Straight. Five in a row, any suits.
Three of a kind.
Two pair.
One pair.
High card. Nothing above, so your highest card plays.
It's worth memorizing the middle of this list, because most beginners know the top and the bottom and then hesitate around flushes and straights. A flush beats a straight, and the reason is simply that flushes are rarer.
The blinds
Before any cards are dealt, two players post forced bets, a small blind and a big blind, and these rotate around the table each hand.
Blinds exist so that there's always something to win. Without them, correct play would be to fold every hand until you're dealt aces, and the game would never move.
The four betting rounds
Preflop. Everyone has their two cards and no shared cards are showing yet. Betting starts to the left of the big blind.
The flop. Three shared cards are dealt face up, followed by another round of betting.
The turn. A fourth shared card, and another round.
The river. A fifth and final shared card, and the last round of betting.
If more than one player is still in after the river, the cards are revealed and the best hand wins. If everyone but one player folds at any point, that player wins without having to show anything.
What you can do on your turn
Check. Bet nothing and stay in. This is only possible if nobody has bet this round.
Bet or raise. Put chips in, forcing others to match or fold.
Call. Match the current bet.
Fold. Give up the hand and lose whatever you've already put in.
The one piece of strategy worth having on day one
Fold more hands than you play. Beginners play too many, because folding feels like you're not participating, but folding is participating. Most hands you're dealt are not worth money, and the discipline to put them down is most of what separates a losing player from a break-even one.
Playing for points
Poker is more fun with stakes, and considerably less fun when the stakes are real money and someone loses rent. Playing for points, chips, or bragging rights preserves the part that makes the game work.
Gamebot runs Poker Night in a Discord channel with no real money involved, which is a decent way to learn the flow of a hand before you play anywhere it counts.