Texas Hold’em Poker Basics
Texas Hold’em Poker is a card game played in successive stages where players bet as to who holds the best card combination (called a ‘hand’) by progressively raising the stakes until there is a ‘showdown’, when the best hand wins all the stakes (‘the pot’). Alternatively, if all but one player have given up betting and dropped out of play, the remaining player wins the pot without a showdown.
It is therefore possible for the pot to be won by a hand that is not in fact the best, everyone else having been ‘bluffed’ out of play by the remaining player.
Players generally play at tables with around 8 players. Everyone starts with an equal number of poker chips. As the game continues then players bet their poker chips depending on the cards they are dealt and the cards in the middle. Players stay in the game until they have no poker chips left. As players get knocked out tables get merged together and players move around to keep the game fair and the numbers on the tables even. The player who ends up with all the chips at the end of the evening is the winner. |  |
Texas Hold’em Poker uses a system called the “blind” system. The blind is a mandatory bet which rotates around the table and increases in value at set time intervals and forces the players to bet larger amounts of chips the longer they stay in the game. This means the game can generally be timed to finish at a predetermined point so that games do not continue forever.
Each player is given two cards at the start of each round, and five ‘community cards’ are dealt into the middle over the course of the four stages of betting. These community cards can be combined with the player’s two cards to make any five card hand out of the following:
Winning hands from
best to worst
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Royal Flush |
Five cards all in a row of the same
suit. Starting at and Ace. |
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Straight Flush |
Five cards in a row, of the same suit. |
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Four of a Kind |
4 cards that are the same. |
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Full House |
Three of a kind, along with two of a kind. |
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Flush |
Five cards of the same suit. |
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Straight |
5 cards in a sequence. |
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Three of a Kind |
3 cards that are the same. |
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Two Pair |
2 x separate pairs. |
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Pair |
2 x cards that are the same. |
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High Card |
This is when you don't have anything. |
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You can view the complete rules of Texas Hold’em Poker as used in our poker tournaments here. This guide is very comprehensive and goes into very fine detail regarding the game, so you may wish to consider simply visiting one of our venues instead or viewing our instructional DVD which is sent out to every pub joining the league. The tournament director and other players at the venue will be more than happy to teach you how to play.
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