This article talks about Texas Hold’em only simply because of the fact that it is now the most common form of professional online bet poker worldwide. Likewise if you would enter any off-line casino and sit down on a poker table it is very prone 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 completely different from playing cash games in terms of the poker rules applied, yet your poker strategy must be quite different if you ever plan to be a successful player in the foreseeable future. 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 viewpoint is that Texas Hold’em is the most exciting and easiest to learn variation of poker and therefore ideal for beginners. You get a whole lot of action and there is a huge number of possibilities to win or lose a hand. A famous saying is: “You only need one minute learn Texas Hold’em but you will need your whole life to master it”.

Dealer, hole cards and blinds

The dealer shuffles a deck of 52 cards without Joker. The game may be played with at the least two and a maximum of 11 players. The dealer will likely be 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 will 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 two players left from the dealer place the small and big blind ahead of the start of each and every round. Then each player is given two cards (hole cards) by the dealer as well as the first betting round will be close to 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 very first player after the big blind is under the gun. What that implies is the fact that he is forced to do the first move without needing any opportunity at all to gather information from other players.