Ready to learn the rules of Texas hold'em? In the pages that follow, you'll learn all the basics: hole cards, the flop, the turn, the river, the blinds, the button ... everything. We'll even cover the betting rules of Limit, No Limit, and Pot Limit.
Any time you want to practice, head over to Party Poker, where you can get the feel of the game with small amounts of money, or even play money.
Ready? Comfortable? Then let's shuffle up and get started.
Community Cards
As with all standard poker games, the goal in hold'em is to create the best five-card hand. What distinguishes hold'em is that it's a community card game, which means that there are five cards that all the players share. Each player is dealt two cards, face down. These are called "hole cards". Next, five community cards are dealt face up in the center of the table. Players then build the best possible hand out of a combination of their hole cards and the community cards.
To give you a better idea of what we're talking about, take look at this sample hand. Note that this is what the table will look like at the completion of a hand.
Notice that Wendy's hole cards are As Kh, while Len has Ac Jc. If Wendy combines her hole cards with the three community cards that give her the best five-card hand, she has two-pair, aces over kings, with a jack kicker. Len's best hand is two-pair, aces over jacks, with a king kicker. In this case, Wendy has the superior hand and wins the pot. (If you're not sure about the rank of hands, you'd better brush up now. Go ahead, we'll wait.)
The Deal
A hand of hold'em begins with the dealer giving each player two hole cards, face down. The dealer then places three cards in the middle of the table, face up. These three cards are known as "the flop". In the example above, the flop was Ad 4s Kc. After the flop, the dealer deals a fourth card, which is called "the turn" (Jd in the example above), followed by a final card, "the river" (2h).
Of course it's not quite that simple. There's also a little betting along the way.
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