While in all forms of poker the best five card poker hand wins, the sport consists of a variety of games. For our discussion, we’re going to focus on Texas Hold’em, the most popular form of poker played today.
The Three Types of Texas Hold’em
There are three types of types of Texas Hold’em that you can play.
The first is called Limit Hold’em. This is where there is a fixed amount that you can bet on each round of betting. The second form of Hold’em is called Pot Limit Hold’em, which is where you can bet up to the size of the pot at any time and no more. The third form of Hold’em is No Limit Hold’em, known as the Cadillac of Poker, which is the game that you see played week in, week out on the World Poker Tour. No Limit Hold’em is the game where you can bet all of your chips at any time.
Playing Hold’em
You begin with two cards in front of you. These are called down cards and are the exclusive property of that particular player. In addition to these down cards, there are five community cards at the center of the table. These are cards that everybody has to play.
In Hold’em you take your two down cards, coupled with the five community cards to form your best five poker hand. Once all the betting is complete, the players will turn up their cards and the best poker hand is awarded the pot.
General Procedures of Play
Now that you have a general idea of how to play Hold’em, let’s get down to the general procedures of play. Now the first thing that happens on a table is what is called a ‘Dealer Button’.
As standard poker blogs such as www.poker-blog.be will tell you, when you play home poker games the deal moves in a clockwise manner around the table. In a casino setting or online poker, you will have a dealer provided for you, a house dealer.
In Hold’em before any cards are dealt, what happens is that the two people to the left of the Dealer Button start by putting in what we call the blinds. These are forced bets that you must put in the pot before the cards are even dealt.
Only two people in the table put in the blinds. It starts the action, it creates the action and gives the other players something to shoot for when they play the pot. Now when the dealer rotates around the table, everyone will put in an equal amount of pots on the table.
Once two cards are given to every player, the first round of betting commences.