Basic Rules For Texas Holdem

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'!

1. Royal Flush (649,739:1)
   Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten all of the same suit – the strongest poker hand.

2. Straight flush (72,192:1)
   Five sequential cards all of the same suit. The second strongest poker hand.

3. Four of a kind (4,164:1)
   Four cards of the same value. Also known as ‘quads’.

4. Full House (693:1)
   Three cards of the same value plus two cards of the same value. Usually a winner!

5. Flush (508:1)
   Five cards all of the same suit.

6. Straight (254:1)
   Five cards in sequential order. Also referred to as a run.

7. Three of a kind (46:1)
   Three cards of the same value.

8. Two pair (20 : 1)
   Two sets of two cards with the same value. A common hand which can sometimes win at showdown!

9. One pair (1.37:1)
   Two cards of the same value.

10. 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

BetOnline Accepts players from the USA, and has soft games compared to Pokerstars and Full Tilt.

Rules of Texas Holdem:

Texas Hold’em by far the most popular form of poker online. Poker’s simplest variant contains just the right balance of skill, strategy and luck to keep the internet poker players hooked, and beginners gagging for more.

Learn the Basic Rules of Texas Holdem

• From a full deck (52 cards), players are dealt two, face down ‘hole cards’. Between two (heads up) and ten (full ring) players can play.
• One player is always the dealer, and two players must always post blinds – small blind and big blind.
• There is a round of betting pre-flop (before the first three community cards are dealt). In No-Limit Hold’em, a player can move all-in at any stage. In Pot-Limit Hold’em, a player can only bet the ‘pot’ (money in the middle), or factors of the pot. In Limit Hold’em, a player can only raise one big blind.
• On his turn, a player has three options – he can fold (muck his cards), check (invest no further money) or raise (increase the pot size).
• After the first round of betting, the flop is delivered. There is another round of betting.
• After the fourth card, the ‘turn’, there is another round of betting.
• There is a final round of betting after the ‘river’, the fifth community card is dealt.
• The aim of the game is to make the best five card hand. The player who achieves this scoops the pot.

Here is a chart summarizing the hand rankings in Texas Hold’em. Of course, it is very rare you actually see a Royal Flush or Four of a Kind. The most common scenario is a player hitting a pair. If both players hit the same pair, then the pot is awarded to the person with the highest ‘kicker’.

For instance, on a 5c 10d Jh 2s 7s board, Steve has Ac Js. His five card hand is Jh Js Ac 10d 7s, so in full word form, ‘a pair of jacks with ace kicker’. John holds Kd Jd. He holds a pair of jacks with king kicker, and so loses the pot. In Texas Hold’em, the ace can represent high or low. So you can make a straight, Ace to 5, and a straight 10-Ace. If both players table exactly the same hand, the pot is split.

Table set up:

Now you know the basics, let’s look at how the game works in practice. This screenshot is taken from a full ring (9 player) table on Full Tilt Poker, one of the biggest online poker sites. It may look confusing at first, but we’ll explain all the terms.

Rules For Texas Holdem Pdf

This is a $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em game. This means that two players must post blinds of $2 (small blind) and $4 (big blind) respectively. In this case, ‘spades42011’ and ‘loques’ are the blinds. ‘crudobad’ is the dealer.

Before the flop, ‘lryyyyyy’ is first to act. Therefore he is in ‘early position’ – he must act the ‘earliest’ before the flop. He has three options – he can fold (commit no money to the pot), flat call (call the big blind of $4) or raise. So why are loques and spades in early position? Although they act last before the flop, because they are on the blinds, they must act first on every other ‘street’ (after the flop, turn and river). Your ‘position’ is determined by your seat, in relation to the dealer. The dealer is always in late position, as he is the last player to act on the flop, turn and river.

The later position you are in, the better. This is because you can adjust your actions to how people act before you. If you are in late position, you have more information on your opponents holding.

Starting Hands

A lot of Texas Hold’em is about selecting the right starting hands to play. For beginners, we advocate playing tight – this means only playing a small range of hands.

Hands such as AA, KK and QQ are premium hands, and should be played very aggressively. Hands such as AK suited and JJ are also very powerful holdings. We should be more careful about playing hands like AQ, and pocket pairs such as 10,10 and 9,9, but they are still strong holdings. We should be very careful about playing marginal hands such as KQ, KQ, A10, as in a full ring game, it’s quite likely there is a superior holding. The earlier your position on the table, the tighter you should play, because there is a higher chance someone acting after you will have a better holding.

There is also value in playing hands like suited connectors (6d 7d) in multi-way pots, because they have flush and straight potential. With these hands, you have the potential to rake in a big pot if you connect with the flop. You should only play these kind of hands if you are getting the right pot-odds (i.e. you stand to win a lot of money on your investment). This will be explained in more detail in later articles.

Basic Rules For Playing Texas Holdem

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Basic Texas Holdem Rules Printable

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