Texas Hold'em poker rules: how to play 2 card poker?

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If there are different variants of poker, it is Texas Hold'em which is the most popular and it is the one which is played in the majority of professional tournaments, in the casino and also online on the most famous site. To summarize the basics of Hold'Hem rules , each player has 2 cards in hand and must obtain the best 5-card hand by combining these 2 cards with the 5 gradually revealed by the dealer (3 on the flop, then 4 on the turn and finally 5 on the river.

There are four main variants of Hold'em which differ in their bet limit:

Limit Texas Hold'em : A predetermined betting limit is applied to each round of betting.
No Limit Texas Hold'em : A player can bet any amount of chips, up to his stack.
Pot Limit Texas Hold'em : A player can bet any amount, up to the size of the pot.
Mixed Texas Hold'em : The game alternates rounds of Limit Texas Hold'em and No Limit Texas Hold'em.

Video: Texas holdem poker rules explained simply

Before going into more detail and learning the subtlety of the rules, here is a very simple presentation of the rules by a croupier. You have less than 2 minutes and understand everything!

Important Stages of a Game of Texas Hold'em

A game is divided into three stages which are repeated until the end of the game:

The setup/launch : Consists of the distribution of the cards and the initial bet.
Rounds of betting : In turn, each player will, depending on the strategy adopted or the quality of his hand, bet or fold.
Showdown : Reveal of each player's hands and designation of the winner of the pot .

Everything clear so far? To know the rules of poker , you need to master the course of the game . Let's see all this in more detail later!

Course of a game of Texas Hold'em Poker

Determine the donor button

To determine the button, you can choose to distribute a card to each player, or place the exact number of cards on the table face down and let each player decide which one to take. The dealer is the player who has the card with the highest value starting from the Ace .

If you are with a professional dealer (or dealer) or someone dedicated to dealing the cards, be aware that the role of dealer will continue to pass from player to player in a clockwise direction. watch . The person will have official dealer status for the current hand and all the organization that involves.

This role is said to be rotating because each player will have to take it in turn . A first dealer for a hand, then the left player's turn and so on at the end of each hand, always clockwise. a watch.

The blinds

Now you have to place the blinds .

There are two blinds in hold'em: a small blind and a big blind . The player to the left of the dealer (dealer) will post the small blind while the player to the left of the one who posted the small blind will post the big blind .

Players must have a stack (amount of chips) at least equivalent to 100 times the size of the big blind .

We can finally determine the types of tokens to use (ex: 1c, 5c, 10c, 20c. These values are called denominations .) to make the game smooth.

If you play with small stakes such as $20, you will favor chips of 10c to 20c.

Generally, a player needs 10% of his total chips in the smallest denomination , as they are only intended to pay the small blind . The majority of other bets will be made with chips with higher values than those present in the small blind. Let's move on to dealing the cards.

The roles of the small and the big blind must, like the role of the dealer button, rotate in turn clockwise.

Betting hands and rounds

The dealer button (the one who deals the cards) deals the first card to the player directly to his left (the one in the small blind), and continues clockwise. One card at a time to each player, until each has two . These are the private/closed cards called hole cards .

A hold'em hand (or move ) consists of one to four maximum betting rounds . It ends when all participants except one have folded or the final round of betting ends with several players remaining.

During a round of betting, each player has three possible game choices :

To fold ( Fold ): The player pays nothing and throws his cards in the center or towards the croupier , face down. He will wait for the next hand to play again .
Follow ( Call, Payer ): The player equalizes the amount of the big blind to get into the shot.
Raise : The player raises an amount at least equal to twice the big blind . (The player can raise more depending on the hold'em variant being played.)

The raise is always the amount of a bet in addition to the amount of the previous bet .

If for example the initial bet is 30c, the player who wants to raise will have to put 60c and his following 90c (the additional initial bet each time in addition).

A betting round ends :

Either when all the players have had the opportunity to act.
Either when the players who have not thrown their cards have bet the same amount of money in the pot.

Preflop

When each player has obtained his cards, we move on to the so-called pre-flop betting phases .

Each participant can look at their cards and decide what they are going to do .

Each preflop always starts with the player to the left of the big blind .

flop

Once the preflop is over, we go to the flop .

The "dealer button" removes the top card from the deck by discarding it, still face down . They say he burns the map . He then places three cards face up in the middle of the table . This is where the first round of post-flop betting begins.

The rules for a betting round after the flop are identical to those for pre-flop , with two exceptions : the first player to act is always the first player still in play (who has cards in hand) to the left of the dealer , and the first player to act can either check or bet . Since at this stage of the game, no bet has been given, calling does not cost anything (free).

To make a bet on the flop, you must put at least the amount of the big blind. Continuing with the previous example, the player must put at least 30c into the pot to make a bet.

Turn

Once the flop is over, the dealer burns another card face down from the top of the deck , before laying down one (and only one) open card following the flop. This is the turn . The third round of betting then begins. It is identical to that of the flop in classic Hold'em (varies in Limit for example).

River

If there is more than one player still in play here, the river is dealt the same way as the turn . It is also called the last street ( or 5th street) ; No more cards will be dealt for this hand .

Shadown

Once the river is finished, it 's showdown time . Players reveal their hand and the best player wins . The player who bet first on the river (or the last raiser) is the first to show his cards . If players want to do it before him, it's possible. If no one has bet on the river, the one closest to the dealer from his left must show his hand first.

If a player has a losing hand vis-à-vis what has already been revealed so far, he can directly discard them without showing them . He then abandons the current pot.

However, it is forbidden to throw them into the discard pile (called muck ) because under certain conditions, other players can ask to see their cards.

Rules for determining the winner of the pot

The winning hand corresponds to the player's best combination of 5 cards. The ranking of hands in poker is determined according to the order of the following table :

The hands are therefore ranked from strongest to weakest in this order: royal flush, straight flush, square; full house, flush (or flush), straight, three of a kind, two pair, pair.

A flush always beats an ooze, and a set always beats two pair . There is no other valid combination , for example "three pair" does not exist (it will always only be two).

A poker hand always consists of five cards , hole or community cards included .

If two (or more) players tie , the pot is split evenly between them.

If none of the players present at the showdown have anything (no pair or anything higher), the winning hand is the hand with the single card (ex: 10 of spades) of the highest value .

Suits (spades , hearts, diamonds, clubs) are never used to assess the strength of a hand in holdem.

The best hand receives the current pot . The dealer passes his dealer button to the player on his left , with the change that this implies for the posting of the small and big blinds . The game continues until the reverse is decided.