Texas Holdem Poker Rules For Beginners
Texas Hold’em Rules. In Texas hold’em each player is dealt two cards called their ‘hole’ cards. Hole cards can only be seen and used by one person. The dealer button (denoted by a circular disc) is allocated before hands are dealt to allow for the positioning of the forced bets: small blind and big blind, and also to determine who will act first and last in the hand. Texas Hold'em Rules. The easiest guide on the planet to play Texas hold'em poker. Omaha Poker Rules. Omaha poker is an action game often played as a pot-limit or fixed-limit game. Texas Hold’em Poker Rules This is a short guide for beginners on playing the popular poker variant No Limit Texas Hold’em. We will look at the following: 1. The betting options 2. The positions 3. The flow of action 4. The hand rankings 5. Eginner’s terminology We’ll also discuss our top 10 poker terms that every player.
The PDF rules of poker are provided below for Texas Hold'em, the most popular poker variant.
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Other popular game variants include Pot Limit Omaha and 5card draw.
Table Of Contents
- Texas Hold'em Rules
- Poker hand Ranking System
Texas Hold'em Rules
In Texas hold’em each player is dealt two cards called their ‘hole’ cards. Hole cards can only be seen and used by one person. The dealer button (denoted by a circular disc) is allocated before hands are dealt to allow for the positioning of the forced bets: small blind and big blind, and also to determine who will act first and last in the hand.
There are a total of four betting rounds: preflop, the flop, the turn and the river. The betting rounds will be detailed further on.
If you have a dedicated dealer (such as at a casino), the button will still move around the table so everybody will eventually have to pay the blinds. The button doesn't show who is dealing in a casino; the button shows who is seated the best position at the table and where the blinds are located.
If you just sat down (out of turn) you will have to pay the blinds in order get dealt a hand; otherwise, you can wait until the blinds come around to your seat. You should wait for the blinds as paying twice is unprofitable.
The size of the blinds depends on the limit; for example, a 1/2 No Limit Hold'em game would have a big blind of $2 and a small blind of 1$. The small blind and big blind are located to the left of the button.
This is shown in the case of a 6 handed game below:
The blinds are an important part of the rules of poker. These forced bets which give players an incentive to play; in other words ‘spice up' the game. Without the blinds, there would be no penalty for waiting and only playing strong hands. The only hand worth playing would be two aces!
Antes are another form of forced bets which are often used the increase the action in some game types such as tournaments and deep stacked cash games.
Pre-flop – The First Betting Round of Hold'em
The first round of betting takes places starting at the position to the left of the big blind (early position or EP). Each player has the following options:
Raise: you can raise the current bet to increase the stakes of the game. If someone has raised before you, you can still raise again – this is call a reraise. The minimum size you can raise is typically chosen to be twice that of the last bet or raise.
Call: When you do not want to raise the stakes but want to continue with your hand you can match the current bet.
Fold: If you feel your hand is not worth playing any further you can fold your hand and not commit any more bets.
Check: If there is no bet placed you can check in order to see the next card. This isn't applicable to preflop. The blinds are the first bet preflop which must be matched with a call or raised, if a player wishes to continue.
Players must act in sequence until all bets are settled. The button must always act last in the first sequence. This first round of betting called ‘pre-flop’ occurs before the flop is dealt.
The Flop – The Second Betting Round
The second round of betting takes places after the three community (shared) cards called the flop are dealt. The action will be to the first player to the left of the dealer. This is opposed to the action starting to the left of the big blind during the preflop betting round.
The first player to act has the option to check bet or fold; although you should not fold when you can check for free. The betting rounds after the flop is dealt is collectively known as ‘post-flop’.
The Turn – The Third Betting Round
The third round of betting occurs after the second community card has been dealt. This card is called the turn. Again, the action starts with the active player to the left of the dealer.
The River and Showdown – The Fourth Betting Round
The fourth and final round of betting occurs when the dealer turns over the river card. The hand ends with the showdown of hands or if there is only one live hand remaining (the other player(s) have folded).
At showdown, the player with the best five card combination from their hole cards and the community cards wins the final pot. Split pots occur when both players have the same best five cards.
After each hand, the button moves to the left of the dealer. This means everyone will have to play the blinds at some point.
Texas hold'em rules are quite simple; however the strategies involved in winning are ever evolving.
The rules of Texas Hold'em are just the beginning so head to our home page if you want to improve your poker game!
Other notes:home page if you want to improve your poker game!
home page if you want to improve your poker game!
Keep this printable PDF hand ranking sheet beside you when you play to make sure you don't make a mistake!
The strongest to weakest hands of them poker hand hierarchy are listed below with the poker hands probability listed in brackets. After reading there will be no debating with friends ‘who has the best poker hand'!
- Royal Flush (649,739:1)
Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten all of the same suit – the strongest poker hand.
Rules Of Texas Holdem Poker For Beginners
- Straight flush (72,192:1)
Five sequential cards all of the same suit. The second strongest poker hand.
- Four of a kind (4,164:1)
Four cards of the same value. Also known as ‘quads’.
- Full House (693:1)
Three cards of the same value plus two cards of the same value. Usually a winner!
- Flush (508:1)
Five cards all of the same suit.
- Straight (254:1)
Five cards in sequential order. Also referred to as a run.
- Three of a kind (46:1)
Three cards of the same value.
- Two pair (20 : 1)
Two sets of two cards with the same value. A common hand which can sometimes win at showdown!
- One pair (1.37:1)
Two cards of the same value.
- High card
The player with the highest card wins. Unlikely to be a winner so play with care.
Kickers
A kicker is much like a decider when both players have similar hand types. For example, if player A has A♠Q♣and Player B has A♣J♠ and the board is A♥K♦5♠ 7♠ 2♦ both players will have top pair with an ace but player A will win because the Q♣ is a better kicker than the J♠. The best five cards in this scenario are AAQ75 whereas the losing hand has AAJ75. A kicker is a very important concept when trying to understand the poker hand ranking system.
Split pots
Split pots occur when both players get to showdown and have the same hand rank. The pot is divided up equally between each of the players.
To take an example, if player A has K♠J♥ and player B has K♣Q♠ on a A♥K♦5♠5♣2♠ board both players will have two pair and ace kicker as their best hand (A, K, K, 5, 5). Therefore the pot will be split between the two players.
Alternatively, if the neither player can improve the hand on the board it will also be a split pot. If the board is A♥K♦5♠5♣K♠ and player A has Q♠J♣ and player B has 4♣4♠ then both players will be playing the board and thus it will be a split pot. Hence, you cannot have three pair in poker and the best two pair will play.
Beyond hand rankings
The rules of poker and poker hand rankings are just the beginning for you on your poker journey. One of the core skills in poker is being able to determine whether your hand is strong or weak on a relative scale as opposed to an absolute scale. For example, three of a kind is extremely strong on a board with no flush or straight possibilities but very weak on a board with 4 to a flush or 4 to a straight (e.g. T♥9♥8♥7♥ – any heart or J or 6 beats three of a kind).
One key point to note is that in poker all suits are of the same value. An Ace high flush of hearts is the same value as an Ace high flush of spades.
The first step to this is remembering if a flush beats a straight, or whether a straight flush beats quads; the next stage is figuring out your hand's relative strength based on how your opponent is playing, his tendencies and most importantly the board texture as noted.
Additionally, we should take into account the following factors:
- How many players are in the pot
- The amount of chips in the pot
- The size of the bets made
If you can understand the poker hand rankings and relative hand strength you will be ahead of the game; get ready to beat all your friends and opponents at your home games and casinos! Want to accelerate your poker learning? Check out or poker training sites post for the quickest ways to improve your poker game.
If you are new to poker and are unsure of what hands you need to play, check out our starting hand charts over at the poker cheat sheet webpage.
Check out this poker hand ranking video for a more visual format of everything we said:
Make sure you check out the fan favorite posts:
Poker cheat sheet for beginners & Best Poker Books
Only starting out with poker in 2020?
I remember when I started with poker, I found remembering the important parts of the game challenging.
But your journey can become easier with this printable poker cheat sheet for beginners (I wish I had this when starting out!).
Table Of Contents
- How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.
- How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example
- How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example
- Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands
Poker Cheat Sheet For Texas Holdem:
Download the high-quality Poker Cheat Sheet printable (PDF) version:
The cheat sheet includes hyperlinks for further reading on any material you may not yet know.
Click here for more information on pre-flop and post-flop. We also discuss Texas Holdem bet sizing in the highlighted link.
If you like the cheat sheet, you may also enjoy these these awesome starting hand charts from upswing poker. They are a more detailed version of the starting hands section in the cheat sheet above which supplement it nicely. Amazingly they have been downloaded almost 200,000 times!
How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.
Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited)
Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic.
Either:
- If first to raise (no other player has raised before you), follow the coloured schematic.
- If facing a raise or reraise, follow the numbered schematic.
Note: If playing on a 6max table (6 players as opposed to 9), the yellow coloured hands will also be able to be played from any position.
See the image below for the numbered and colour schematic.
Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop.
How to play poker preflop is a tough subject to cover in detail. There are many factors you need to take into account such as:
- Your position and your opponents position.
- Your opponents likely holdings
- Board texture
- Previous history
A brief explanation of why position is powerful and why we play fewer hands when there are more players left to act (still with a hand):
When playing on a fullring table, you will have to contend with nine players, who each have a chance of picking up a big hand. Therefore, when playing a full ring game, you will play fewer hands. You can read more on this concept at fullring vs. 6max.
The difference in player numbers is also why we play a wide range of hands from the Button, but very few hands from UTG (first position). When opening the Button, we only have two players left to act (unlikely for them to have a strong hand), whereas when playing from UTG in a full ring game, eight other players could potentially pick up a big hand.
For more in-depth details on this see Texas Holdem Strategy and Position is King!
Step 4: Take home some cash
Hopefully, this poker cheat sheet will help you ‘bring home the bacon' as they say, but there is always something more to learn in poker. Keep reading for some more cheat sheets which might be of use to you.
Get Your Miniature (Credit Card Sized) Texas Holdem Starting Hands Cheat Sheet
This cheat sheet only contains the most vital information you need so it can handily fit in your pocket. The legends have also been squeezed onto the hand chart in front of hands we always fold.
To download printable PDF which is scaled to credit card size, use the Facebook unlock button:
Poker Odds Cheat Sheet (for Texas Hold'em)
Get your pot odds cheat sheet below. You can use this to determine the number of outs required to continue based on the pot odds you are being offered. You can also use it to convert between percentages, required outs and ratios for all kinds of situations in poker. The pot odds cheat sheet is explained in more detail below:
Click here to get a high-quality printable pdf version of the Poker Odds Cheat Sheet.
When your opponent bets you will be offered odds based on the size of his bet. For example, if your opponent bets half pot you will be offered odds of 3:1 on a call (call 1 to win 3). Essentially, it is your risk to reward ratio.
Pot odds will tell you whether is it correct for you to call or fold based on what size our opponent bet and how many cards that will improve our hand.
If you are interested in the learning poker math, check out our best poker books recommendation page here for some awesome books on poker math.
How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example
1. Work out pot odds
In this hand, our opponent bets $26 into a $41.5 pot making the total pot size $67.5. This gives us odds of 67.5: 26 (67.5 = 41.5+26). Or approximately 2.6:1. You can also see how to convert this into a percentage in our article pot odds.
2. Find 2.6:1 on the card (or as close to it as possible).
Basic Rules Of Texas Holdem
We locate 2.6:1 on the chart tells us that 2.6:1 translates to 30.11% pot equity. In other words:
- if we win 30% of the time, we will break even,
- if we win > 30% of the time we will make a profit on average in this situation
- if we win <30% of the time, we will make a loss on average in this situation
3. Determine our actual equity
This is the tough part, unfortunately.
You have to estimate how often you are beaten by your opponent in order to determine if you can profitably call or not. To do this you can use a program such as equilab to plug in hands that you think your opponent may have and the hand that you currently hold. To learn more about estimating what your opponent may be holding see the article poker hand range: the comprehensive beginner guide. From the example above, we plug in some hands we think our opponent may have and see that we have 34% equity:
4. Determine if we can profitably call.
Since our equity is greater than our pot odds, we can profitably call the river bet. If our equity were less than the pot odds being offered, we would have to fold as we cannot c call.
How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example
Texas Holdem Poker Rules Pdf
Let's take a similar situation (confronted with a bet), except this time we are on the flop with KQs, and we have a flush draw with nine outs. A King and Queen which could be considered outs, but they aren't clean outs. This means even if we hit our hand we still may not win (say for example our opponent has AA).
1. Work out equity percentage:
Since we have nine clean outs, we can simply go to the number 9 on the card and then determine our equity.
This means that we need a minimum pot odds of 1.9:1 or 38% when we have nine outs on the flop with two cards still to come.
3. Compare pot odds to odds given by bettor.
Our equity is 38%, so we need pot odds of less than 38%. The lower the pot odds, the more profitable the call.
Our pot odds are 12.5/33 which is 37%, and hence we just about have the pot odds to call. However, we are also in positon (and will act last with more information) and have two overcards to the board (both a King and Queen will make top pair good kicker). So this is an easy call.
4. Further reading
We need seven outs to continue, and we have nine outs with a flush draw. See calculating outs for more details.
For more information on how to use this poker cheat sheet see poker and pot odds.
This video will also be useful to you:
Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands
In case you aren't familiar with the hand strengths, and hand rankings of poker check out the printout Texas Holdem hands cheat sheet:
(You may also be interested in the rules of texas hold em)
There are a few important things to remember when memorising at the poker hand rankings:
Best Five Cards Win
In poker, it is always the best five cards wins. This means it is not only the pairs that matter if there is no clear winner (nobody has a pair), the decision will go down to high card wins.
Kickers
Kickers decide the winning hand when two opponents have the same pair or three of a kind. For example, if one opponent has AQ (ace-queen) and another has AJ, the opponent with AQ would win on an A7522 board as he has the five card hand of AAQ75 whereas the second opponent has AAJ75.
Split Pots
Split pots occur when opponents have the same hand. For example, imagine one opponent has A4 and the other A3 on AQ752 board. Both opponents would have five card hand of AAQ75. Neither the 4 or 3 would play.
You can get more information about hand rankings on our web page here.
If you are more visually inclined, check out this video on poker hand rankings:
For more on Texas Hold'em strategy, see poker 101.
Make sure you check out the fan favourite posts:
Common poker mistakes & Texas Holdem Poker Tips
Good luck at the poker tables with your new poker cheat sheet!