This article talks about Texas Hold’em only simply because of the very fact which it is now the most popular type of quality online casino poker worldwide. Likewise if you would enter any off-line casino and sit down on a poker table it really is very likely to be Texas Hold’em again. Within Texas Hold’em you have the options of playing tournaments or cash games, limit or no limit. Playing tournaments in usually not very different from playing cash games with regard to the poker rules applied, yet your poker strategy must be quite different if you ever arrange to be a successful player later on. Further known poker games are Card-Stud, Omaha High/Low, Draw-Poker and Razz where any of these game types would need to be described in a separate article.

My personal point of view is the fact that Texas Hold’em will be the most exciting and easiest to learn variation of poker and therefore ideal for novices. You get a whole lot of action and there is a huge range of possibilities to win or lose a hand. A famous saying is: “You only need one minute learn Texas Hold’em but you may need your entire life to understand it”.

Dealer, hole cards and blinds

The dealer shuffles a deck of 52 cards without Joker. The game may be played with a minimum of two and a maximum of 11 players. The dealer is usually a player himself. The dealer button moves clockwise from round to round. The dealer button is a big chip that lies in front of the dealer. The button also defines the 2 players that can be forced to place a bet (blinds). The dealer also another function: He needs to push the game and ensure that everything is running correctly. He is responsible for the correct bets and that the 2 players left from the dealer place the small and big blind before the start of each and every round. Then each player is given two cards (hole cards) by the dealer and also the first betting round is approximately to start.

The first betting round begins with the player left of the big blind. Within the first betting round only the two players with the small and big blind are skipped as their first bets are the blinds. The first player after the big blind is under the gun. What that implies is that he is forced to do the very first move without the need of any opportunity at all to gather information from other players.