"Texas Hold-Em: What You Should Know Before Playing”Texas hold-em is a community card poker game. Meaning each player gets two hole cards, which they combine with five board cards. Basically you use a total of seven cards, to make a five card hand. Make the BEST possible high hand, and you’ll win the pot! Play this game with a minimum of two, but no more than 10 players. There are two formats that texas hold-em is played in. One is a cash game format and the other is a tournament format. Both games are played the same, but varying strategies and skills are used in each format. Different betting structures can be used in each format as well, each with it’s own strategy and skill set being used. We’ll go over... · The two different formats · Various betting structures · How the game is dealt Texas hold-em cash games are just as advertised, a poker game played with real money. Each chip in a cash game has real cash value. Cash games are played for table stakes only. This means you can’t whip out money in the middle of a hand. And money on the table plays. Cash games require a minimum buy-in amount. The minimum buy-in depends on two things: the betting structure of the game and the amount of the blinds. Some betting structures also have a maximum buy-in. I’ll explain this when we discuss betting structures. In a cash game, the blinds never change. You can cash out when you want. In texas hold-em tournaments, players buy-in for an equal amount. Players start with an equal amount of chips. This amount doesn’t always reflect the amount you bought in for. It can be whatever amount the poker room decides. All buy-ins get put in a prize pool. You play the tournament and try to eliminate other players. Players receive a percentage of the prize pool, based on how far they make it in the tournament. If 40 players buy-in to a tournament, the top four will get paid. 1st gets 40% of the prize pool. 2nd gets 30%. 3rd gets 20%, and 4th gets 10%. If there are more players, there will be a different percentage of players paid out. The top 10% of players get paid in a tournament. In tournaments blinds go up after a certain amount of time has passed. The time passed is called a level. Online texas hold-em levels vary anywhere between 2 and 10 minutes. In live tournaments levels can vary from 10 minutes, all the way to 2 hours. This all depends on the poker room running the tournament. The only way to get paid in a tournament is to make the top 10% of all players entered in the tournament. Once you make the top 10%, you can’t cash out. You either have to get knocked out of the tournament or win it! Betting structures are... · Limit · No limit · And pot limit Limit betting structures are also known as fixed limit. The minimum buy-in is usually 5x whatever the big blind of the game is. This can vary from poker room to poker room. There is no maximum buy-in in a limit texas hold-em game. Limit is when you can only bet a fixed amount of chips. In a cash game, if you’re playing $5-10 limit, bets before the flop and on the flop are in increments $5. On the turn and river, bets are made in increments of $10. There is a cap on how many bets each player puts in the pot, on each betting round. The cap is usually 1 bet and 3 raises, sometimes four raises. Depending on the poker room. One exception to the cap, is when there are only two players in the pot. When you’re heads up, you can raise and re-raise until one player is all in. Using the $5-10 limit betting structure, the amount one player could put in before the flop and on the flop, would be $20. On the turn and river, $40. This doesn’t mean you can bet $20 on the flop, then $40 on the turn and river. The only way this can happen is lets say on the flop player A bets $5. Player B raises to $10. Player A then raises to $15 and player B caps the betting at $20. Now player A can put in the last $5 bet. Both player A and B have put $20 in the pot on the flop, but they did it in $5 increments. Tournaments can also be played with a limit betting structure. No limit games are when players can bet any amount of chips; any time it is their turn to act. The minimum bet is whatever amount the big blind is. The maximum bet is how many chips you have on the table. A minimum buy-in is 25x the big blind. The maximum is 100x the big blind. These are general amounts and can change from one poker room to another. When you raise in no limit, you must raise at least double the previous bet. On the flop if someone bets $10, you have make it AT LEAST $20 to play. No limit cash games and tournaments are very popular. Televised tournaments such as the world poker tour and the world series of poker have contributed to no limit texas hold-em’s popularity. Players’ hole cards are displayed on the television for the viewers to see. Which makes watching what the players actually do with their cards, VERY exciting to watch. In Pot limit texas hold-em, the max bet is the amount of chips in the pot. Min and max buy-ins are the same as in no limit. If there is $23 in the pot, in a $1-2 blind game, you can bet anywhere from $2 up to $23. If you want to raise when a player bets it gets a little tricky. It requires some addition to figure out but should be fairly simple. Lets use a $1-2 blind game as an example. Two players in front of you call the $2. Now you want to raise, how much can you raise? The minimum raise is $4, double the big blind. You have a monster hand and want to raise the maximum though. First add up the money already in the pot. SB=$1 + BB=$2 + PlayerA=$2 + PlayerB=$2, these added up equal $7. With your $2 call it equals $9. Add the $9 to your $2 call and this equals $11. The maximum you can raise is $11. Here is another example in the same game. You and another player are heads up on the flop. The pot has $10 in it. The other player bets $10 (the amount of the pot) and you want to raise the max. First say “RAISE!”, then put your $10 call in the pot, and add up how much is in the pot. The pot=$10 + your opponents $10 bet + your $10 call all equals $30. You can put $30 on top of your $10 call, for a total of $40. You can raise a maximum of $40! If it sounds complicated, get some chips and work on it. Just remember to put your call into the pot before adding the pot up, then add the pot amount onto your call and that’s the amount of the raise. How to deal texas hold-em. First, high card for the button. The small blind and big blind are posted clockwise from the button. The deal starts at the small blind and goes clockwise around the table. Each player gets one card at a time until all players have two hole cards. Action goes clockwise around the table. Pre-flop betting round starts with first player clockwise from the big blind. This player and all players after, have the option to... · Fold their cards · Raise the bet in front of them · Or call the bet in front of them When all players have acted, the dealer burns the top card of the deck and deals a flop. flop betting round and all following betting rounds start with the first player clockwise from the button. Once players have acted, the dealer burns a 2nd card and puts up the turn card. Then there is a … Turn betting round. When action is complete, dealer burns a 3rd card and deals a river card. There is one last betting round on the river. When betting is finished, the remaining players turn their cards face up, and the dealer determines a winner. More texas hold em poker rules. Short version of texas hold-em play. · Deal two cards to each player · Pre-flop betting round · Burn top card, deal a flop · Flop betting round · Burn 2nd card, deal the turn · Turn betting round · Burn 3rd card, deal the river · River betting round · Showdown · Best hand wins the pot! I hope this information gave you insight to the various forms of texas hold-em and how to play them. After you read about strategies and rules for texas hold-em, jump in a game! Good luck! |
