Texas Hold'em
Also known as Hold'em, Holdem, Texas Holdem
- Players
- 2-10 players (best with 6)
- Deck
- 1 standard deck (52 cards), plus chips or counters for everyone
- Time
- 30-120 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Category
- Bluffing
Setup
Everyone plays from a stack of chips in front of them, and every chip in that stack is live: you can lose all of it in one hand, and you may never reach into your pocket for more in the middle of one, though in a cash game you can top up as much as you like between hands. Nine or ten seats fill a table, six makes the liveliest game, and two people can play a perfectly good version of it.
Cards rank ace high, with the ace doubling as the low card at the bottom of a five-high run. Suits carry no rank at all. Two hands of identical rank divide the pot rather than one edging out the other, which surprises people who have come from games where spades beat hearts.
A marker called the button sits in front of one player and shows who is nominally dealing. After each hand it moves one seat clockwise, and because it decides who speaks first and who speaks last, moving it is what rotates the advantage of position around the table. In a home game the button also tells you whose turn it is to shuffle.
Two forced bets called the blinds are put in before any cards appear, so that the very first hand already has something worth contesting. The player one seat clockwise from the button posts the small blind and the next one posts the big blind, the small usually being half the big. The blinds are how the stakes are named: a one-two game means a small blind of one and a big blind of two.
With two players everything inverts. The button posts the small blind, the other player posts the big blind, and the button acts first before the community cards and last afterwards.
The dealer then gives two cards face down to each player, one at a time clockwise, beginning with the small blind. These are your hole cards and nobody else sees them until a showdown, if there is one.
Tournaments usually add an ante once the levels climb, most often a single ante the size of the big blind, posted by one player on the table's behalf rather than by everyone separately.
Play
A hand runs through four betting rounds. Everything in between is just the dealer turning over more shared cards.
WHAT YOU CAN DO ON YOUR TURN
- Check. Pass the action along without putting anything in. Only legal when nobody has bet ahead of you in this round.
- Bet. Put chips in when nobody else has.
- Call. Match the largest amount wagered so far this round.
- Raise. Increase it, which puts everyone else back on the spot.
- Fold. Push your cards away and give up whatever you have already put in. Folding costs nothing further and is allowed at any turn.
A round is finished once everybody still holding cards has had a turn and everyone who has not folded has put the same amount into the pot for that round, all-ins aside. Chips already committed stay in the pot; you never take them back, and at the end of each round they are gathered into the middle.
BEFORE THE FLOP
The blinds are already live bets, so the round opens with the player one seat clockwise from the big blind, who must at minimum call the big blind to continue. Action runs clockwise and finishes on the big blind, who gets a special privilege: if nobody has raised, that player may still raise rather than being forced to check, which is the option.
THE FLOP
The dealer discards the top card face down, which is the burn, and turns three cards face up in the middle. These belong to everybody. Betting now starts with the first player still in the hand clockwise from the button and ends with the last active player before the button, so the button speaks last, and that ordering holds for the rest of the hand.
THE TURN AND THE RIVER
Another burn and a fourth shared card, then a betting round. Another burn and a fifth shared card, then the last betting round.
HOW MUCH YOU MAY BET
The modern default is no limit. An opening bet must be at least the size of the big blind and may go as high as every chip you have. A raise has to increase the wager by at least as much as the previous bet or raise did, so against a bet of ten you may make it twenty or more, but not fifteen.
You may always put your whole stack in even when it falls short of the amount owed. Doing so caps what you are playing for: you can win from each opponent only as much as you yourself put in, and everything they wager beyond that is set aside in a side pot which the still-active players contest without you. Several all-ins in one hand can build several such pots, each settled separately.
An all-in that does not amount to a full raise is the one case that trips people up. It does not reopen the betting: a player who has already acted for the full amount may call the difference but may not raise again, while anyone yet to act still has a full set of options. So if the bet was ten and someone shoves for fourteen, the player who bet ten can only put in the extra four.
THE SHOWDOWN
If two or more players are still in after the final round, hands are revealed. Whoever made the last bet or raise shows first; if the last round was checked all the way round, the first remaining player clockwise from the button shows first, and anyone who knows they are beaten may fold face down instead of showing.
Seven cards are available to everybody still in — the two nobody else has seen plus the five in the middle — and the hand you hold is whichever five of those seven is strongest. Any combination counts. You may use both hole cards, only one, or neither at all, and using neither is called playing the board.
A hand can also end long before this. The moment everyone else folds, the last player standing takes the pot immediately and never has to show what they were holding.
Goal & scoring
There is no running score in Hold'em. Each hand is a fight over a single pot, and there are exactly two ways to win it: hold the best five-card hand at the showdown, or make everybody else fold before you get there. The second way is why the game is not simply a race for good cards, since a pot taken uncontested is worth the same as one taken with the strongest hand.
Hands are compared by the standard poker categories. Within a category the ranks decide it, and a hand shorter than five distinguishing cards is settled by kickers, the leftover cards ranked in order until one side is higher. Two hands that match all the way down tie and split the pot; where the split leaves an odd chip, it goes to the first player clockwise from the button. Because five shared cards are on the table, ties are far more common here than in games where every card is private.
Where side pots exist they are settled from the outside in, each awarded to the best hand among the players eligible for it, so a short all-in stack can take the main pot while a bigger hand collects the rest.
A cash game has no ending condition. Chips represent stakes directly, you may sit down or stand up between hands, and where you finished is simply what is in front of you when you leave.
A tournament has a definite end. Everyone starts with an identical stack, the blinds rise on a clock so that no one can wait indefinitely, players are eliminated as they run out of chips, and play continues until one person holds all of them. Finishing positions rather than chip counts determine the result.
Variants
Omaha — Four hole cards each rather than two, and a rigid rule that exactly two of them play alongside exactly three from the board. That single constraint is easy to misread — four hearts in your hand and three on the table is not a flush, because only two of yours can count — and it changes the game enough that Omaha has its own entry in this collection rather than living here. Pot-limit betting is its usual companion.
Short-deck (six-plus) Hold'em — All the deuces through fives are stripped out, leaving a 36-card pack, and everything else about the deal and the betting stays put. The thinner deck rearranges the hand rankings: a flush becomes harder to make than a full house and outranks it, and three of a kind beats a straight. The ace still plays low, now completing a nine-high run with the six. Antes from every player commonly replace the blinds.
Fixed-limit and pot-limit betting — The same game with the bet sizes constrained rather than open. Under fixed limit every bet and raise is a set amount, the smaller unit before and on the flop and double that on the turn and river, with the number of raises in a round usually capped at four. Under pot limit you may bet anything up to the current size of the pot. Both reward patient value betting, because you cannot threaten anyone's whole stack in a single move.
Home-game dealing without a house dealer — With nobody employed to run the deck, the player on the button deals, and the deal moves with the button each hand. Keep the burn cards in one face-down pile away from the folded hands so that nothing gets picked up by mistake, and let whoever is not in the hand cut. Agree in advance whether a card exposed during the deal is simply reshuffled in or triggers a misdeal, since that is the argument every home game eventually has.
Rules checked against Pagat, PokerNews, Upswing Poker, PokerListings, Wikipedia, World Poker Tour, Automatic Poker.