| Winning Plays - The Basics |
- Don’t
go to the table with insufficient stake money.
- Play
within your budget.
- If you have a poor hand, fold early.
- Make your winning hands pay.
- Study the opposition.
- Enjoy it.
|
| Table Limits |
| Be aware that many tables have betting limits, with a minimum
and a maximum bet – e.g. a $1/$2 game is one where the minimum
bet is $1 and the maximum is $2. In the later rounds. |
| In the first two betting rounds, all bets and raises are equal
to the minimum bet. In the last two betting rounds, all bets and
raises are equal to the maximum. |
| The bet amount can climb a maximum of 3 times in each round of
betting, meaning that there can be one bet and three raises in
each round until the River card is dealt, when there will be no
limit
to the amount of raises
possible. |
| The Cards |
| Two cards are dealt face down to you and every other player.
These cards belong to you and no other player. These are called
'hole' (or pocket) cards. As in, "I had two aces in the hole". |
| The rest of the cards are dealt across the middle of the table,
face up. Every player shares those cards. They are called 'board
cards',(or community cards), as in "There are three diamonds
on the board". All players use any combination of hole and
board cards to make the best possible five card poker hand. |
| Blind Bets |
| In Texas Hold’em there is no ante, so to ensure there is
money in the pot, two players must make a bet before the cards
are even dealt. Because you make the bet without knowing what you
hand is, the bets are called 'blind' bets. |
| If you are the player to the left of the dealer you place the
'small blind', which is equal to one half of a bet. If the first
round of bets are $2 per bet, your small blind is a $1 bet. If
you are player sitting to the left of the small blind, you are
the 'big blind' and must place a bet equal to the betting unit
for the round. In this example, you would bet $2. The cards are
then dealt. |
| Betting |
| Throughout the hand, before the dealer deals any new cards, every
player has to have bet the same amount. If there is no bet on the
table, and you do not wish to bet, you can check. That means you
want to stay in the round, but don't want to bet, and since there
are no bets in front of you, or no one has pledged more money to
the pot than you did, you don't have to bet. So you check, and
the action passes to the next player. If everyone in a betting
round checks, the dealer flips over the next card, and the players
get to see a 'free' card. |
| Calling |
| If someone has bet, and it's your turn to act, you can do one
of several things. If you do not want to match the bet, fold your
cards, and let the hand continue without you. |
| If you want to stay in the hand you can match the bet by calling.
You put up as many chips as the people to your right have. Everyone
has pledged the same amount of chips to the pot. The action proceeds
to the player on your left. |
| Raises |
| When players feel strongly about their cards, they may wish to
bet more - so they raise the bet. The amount someone can raise
depends on the type of game you are playing: limit, pot-limit,
no-limit. |
| Regardless of the limit, everyone must now match this new amount
of chips pledged to the pot. So, if someone had bet two chips,
and you had raised it to four, the betting round would not end
until either the other player either put up two more chips, to
match the amount of chips you had pledged to the pot, or until
the other player folded. |
| Once everyone has contributed to the pot equally, the betting
round ends. Remember, a round doesn’t end until everyone
has either pledged the same amount of chips to the pot, or has
folded their cards. |
