Well I guess because my blog is called 1st rule of poker I should include some basic rules of poker. Now there are many variations of Texas Hold’em. Here are the rules that they all have in common. There are up to ten players at a table. One player is determined as the DEALER. In casinos they have professional dealers so the player dealer is marked by a Dealer button / Puck.
To build a small pot before the cards are dealt two players will put in bets with out looking at their cards. One player puts in half a min bet and the other a full min bet. These are called the BLINDS. The small blind (half bet) is directly clockwise of the dealer and the big blind is clockwise to that. Each player is dealt two of their own cards face down dealing the first card to the small blind.
The betting action always starts clockwise from the button but for the first round of betting the blinds have already acted with each of their bets. So the first person to act after the cards have been dealt is the player clockwise to the big blind. Each player must either call what the big blind, raise more then double the big blind, or fold their cards at this time. Players may re-raise a raiser as long as they call the blind, call the raise, then make a raise more then the value of the first raise. Acting clockwise in turn, until there everyone has called or folded.
The dealer then takes the top card in the deck and places it to the side out of play, This is called burning a card. They then take the next three cards and place them face up in the middle of the table for all players to use. These are called community cards or the flop. The remaining players in the hand start action clockwise of the button and may either pass/check, make a bet, raise if a bet has already been made or fold their cards if there is already a bet. If no bet has been made all players may pass/check and move on to the next community card.
The dealer then burns a second card and flips one more card onto the community cards. This is called the Turn card or fourth street. The betting continues as before but the min bet is usually double the first two rounds.
The dealer then burns a third card and flips the last card called fifth street or the River card. The betting continues same as the turn card until all bets are called. If there is no betting on the last round the person clockwise to the dealer button is first to show their hand and each player either folds or shows a better hand acting in turn clockwise in action. If There was a bet after the last card, the player who made the bet shows their hand first and players show better hands clockwise in turn.
The best 5 card hand, using any combination of their two and the five community cards, wins the pot. If two players have the same hand they split the pot. Each suit has the same value in Texas Holdem. If the five cards in the middle are the best 5 cards all players still in the hand would split the pot.
Feel free to Print Texas Holdem rules if you want to teach others how to play.