Poker has many variations and Texas Hold’em is one of those variations. It is played with a regular 52-card deck and up to ten players can participate in the game. A marker called the ‘dealer button’ is used to demarcate the position of the player that is dealing the current hand. The button is the last player to act and has a slight advantage over the other players. After each hand is completed, the button is moved one position in a clockwise direction so that each player has an opportunity to hold the button and obtain its advantages.

Holding the button provides an advantage because you get to see all the other players’ bets before you place your own bet. Of course, as more and more players place their bets, the overall picture becomes clearer. This puts the first players to bet at a clear disadvantage. The players in the middle are not at quite as much as a disadvantage as the first players but also don’t have as great an advantage as the final players. By the time the final player must place his bet, he has obtained a lot of useful information

Seated immediately to the left of the button are the players in seat one and seat two. They must put down ‘blind bets’ and they must put their bet in the pot before they are allowed to see their cards. Typically, the player in the first position puts in a blind bet that is equal to half of the second player’s bet. There are some games where the first bet, called the small blind, may be between one-third and two-thirds of the size of the second bet called the big blind.

The two blind bets are needed to make sure that there is money in the pot for every round. It also ensures that there will be at least one active player in the round that the other players can play against.

Each player is dealt two cards face down and seen only by the players to whom they were dealt. Other players do not see the face down cards dealt to everyone else until the showdown at the end of the hand. At this point, there is a round of betting called the before-the-flop or pre-flop bet.

Here, the third position has three choices for how to proceed. Because the blind wager has already been made he can do any of the following:

Fold: If he thinks his hand is no good he can fold. This will take him out of the game entirely until the hand is completed. In the next hand, he will be the big blind because the button will have moved one clockwise position over.

Call: A call is placed when he matches the bet amount of the big blind.

Raise: How much he raises the bet is determined by whether it is a limit, pot-limit, or no-limit game. These variations of poker will be discussed at a later time, but it is important that you learn them in order to fully understand the game. For simplification purposes, we will assume that the game we are discussing is limit poker with $5 and $10 blinds, which means it is a 10-20 game.

If the player decides to call, he must place $10 in the pot. If he decides raise, he must place $20 in the pot. The betting continues in a clockwise direction until all betting is completed. Each player has the option to call or rise as his turn arrives. The betting gets progressively higher. When a player rises by placing $20 in the pot, the next player that wishes to call must place $20 in the pot and $30 if he wishes to rise. Where the game is played and the house rules will determine the number of rises allowed per game. Some casinos will limit the number of rises allowed to three while others place the limit at four. In private games, of course, the players decide the raise limit.

Take the example of a game where the third player raises to $20 and everyone else afterwards folds except for the button player who calls by placing $20 in the pot. The player in the small blind, who has already placed $5 in the pot, must now decide whether to call with $15 or rise with $25. If he calls, the big blind must then decide if he is going to call with $10 or rise with another $10. If no one rises, the big blind has the opportunity to rise, called the option, because he had to bet his original $10 without having seen his cards.

Now that the pre-flop betting is complete, the dealer places three cards face up on the table. These three cards are called the flop and they are community cards that belong to everyone.

The community card feature is described below. If the cards you are holding are queen-jack and the flop comes as queen, five, and four, you have a pair of queens with the jack as the secondary card, also called the kicker. This is not a bad hand unless another player is holding a king-queen in which case he also has a pair of queens but his kicker card is higher than yours, making him the winner.

Next, comes the second round of betting. In this round, the person with an active hand that is seated to the left of the button is the first to act. Unlike the first round where the options were fold, call, and raise, in this round the options are limited to check and bet. To check means you can decline to bet at the moment but hold on to the option to call or raise bets made by other players. To bet means, in this example because of the structure of the game, placing $10 in the pot.

This round is different because the blind money placed in the pot in the first round was placed there to give the players a reason to play but at this stage there is already money in the pot making blinds no longer necessary and giving the first player the option to check or bet $10.

Occasionally it happens that all the bettors check which means that no betting takes place on the flop. If someone does bet however, the players must decide whether they are going to call or rise and the same limit on the number of rises in a round still applies.

After the third round of betting is completed, the dealer places the fourth community card, known as the turn or Fourth Street, on the table. In limit poker the size of the betting amount now doubles to $20 (giving the game is 10-20 name). Except for the increase in the amount of the bet, the process of betting and checking is the same as that on the flop.

After the completion of the fourth round of betting, the dealer places the fifth and final community card called the river or Fifth Street. The process of betting and checking then proceeds in the same manner as the process in the fourth round.

At the end of the fourth round of betting, the remaining players will turn their hands over. If at any time during the game a player makes a bet that all the other players are unwilling to call, the hand is turned over immediately and the player who made the final bet takes the pot without having to show his hands.

With all the cards revealed to everyone, the player holding the best possible five-card hand out of the seven cards available to play with, wins the pot. It is possible for the players to use two, one, or none of their private first two cards. The last option would be unusual but it would be possible if the five community cards made up a straight, flush, or full house.

For example, say that two players remain in the hand at the end. One of these players is holding two kings and one is holding two aces. The five community cards are 5, 6, 7, and 8. The two players would split the pot because they each have exactly the same nine-high straight. Before the river card, the player with the two aces had a distinct advantage, but the concluding nine cost him half the pot just as a concluding four, which would also have put a straight on the board.