| |
Texas Hold'em has gained international fame in
recent years as the preferred game of the World Poker Tour and the World
Series of Poker. Texas Hold'em is a fun and fast game with many
variations. These rules apply to the Tradiional form of Texas Hold'em as
played at Ultimatebet .
In a full ring game, Texas Hold'em is played with a standard 52-card
deck and as many as 10 participants. A dealer "button" is used to
indicate the position of the player who would be dealing the cards if
the players were actually dealing the cards themselves. The player
holding the button acts last and thus has a positional advantage that
remains throughout the hand. After each hand, the button is moved one
position clockwise, so that all players in the game have, after a full
round, had exactly the same number of opportunities to hold positional
advantage.
Holding the button is an advantage, because as the player to act last,
you have more information available to you when your turn to bet arrives.
For exactly the same reasons, being forced to act first is a
disadvantage. The players acting in the middle are, as you might imagine,
somewhere in-between on the advantage/disadvantage scale; the later you
act, the better your position.
The two players on the button's immediate left must post "blind"
bets...that is, amounts they place in the pot before they see their
cards. Typically, the player in the very first position posts a blind
bet one-half the size of the player in the second position, although in
some games, the first bet (called the "small blind") may be as little as
one-third or as much as two-thirds the size of the second bet (called
the "big blind").
All participants in the Texas Hold'em game are now dealt two cards face
down. These cards belong exclusively to their "owners," and are not seen
by the other players at any time until the showdown at the end of the
hand. A round of betting takes place during this point, which is called
"before the flop" or "pre-flop."
In the pre-flop betting round, the player in third position has only
three choices. Because a blind wager has already been made, the player
can do any of the following:
Fold . If the third player folds, he is out of the hand permanently, and
cannot participate again until the next deal of the cards (when, because
of the way the button moves around the board, he will be the big blind)
Call , by matching the size of the big blind; or
Raise . How much the player can raise depends on whether the game is
limit, pot-limit, or no-limit. For ease of discussion, we will assume
the game played in our sample hand is Limit Texas Hold'em poker, with $5
and $10 blinds, which means it is a "10-20 game."
If he calls, he places $10 in the pot. If he raises, he places $20 in
the pot.
The action continues in clockwise fashion around the table, with each
player in turn having the option to fold, call or raise. If the third or
another player has raised, the player who acts after the raiser must now
decide whether he wishes to call $20, or raise to $30. There is a limit
on the number of raises per round; in some casinos, the limit is three
raises, and in some, it is four raises. UltimateBet.com uses the 4-raise
rule.
Let us assume that the third player does indeed raise to $20, and that
everyone else folds until the button, who calls for $20. Now, the player
in the small blind must decide if he is going to call for $15, or raise
to $25 (because he already had $5 in the pot). If he calls, the big
blind must decide if he is going to call for $10 or raise another $10.
If no one had raised the player in the big blind would have an
opportunity to raise, called "the option," because he was forced to bet
his original $10 without having looked at his cards.
With the pre-flop betting complete, the dealer now deals out three cards
face-up. In Texas Hold'em, these "community" cards belong to everyone,
and these three cards are called "the flop." To see how the community
card feature works, if your "personal" cards are Queen-Jack, and the
flop comes Q-5-4, you have a pair of Queens with a Jack "kicker" (secondary
card). In Texas Hold'em this isn't a bad position, unless someone else
has a hand like King-Queen, in which case you both have a pair of Queens,
but you are losing, because the other player has a better kicker. A
second round of betting follows.
In the second betting round, the player closest to the left of the
button, who is still in the hand, acts first. Unlike the first betting
round, though, where the options were "call, raise or fold," now the
options are:
Check , which means to decline to wager now but to retain the option to
call or raise bets made by other players; or
Bet , in this case, because of the game's structure, $10.
Why this difference? On the first round, the blind money was placed in
the pot to give the players a reason to play. If there were no blinds in
Texas Hold'em, there would be very little incentive for a player to
enter a hand without the absolute best possible cards, because there
would be nothing to win. As the first player in, you would be risking
your $10 bet to win nothing; the only way you could win something would
be if someone after you decided to call or raise your bet, and one would
assume that the player after you, knowing that you had a strong hand
(because you were the first to bet) would only raise or call with a
strong hand himself).
The blinds thus give players something to shoot at, a reason to play
with something less than the best hand. But once we reach the flop,
there is already money in the pot, so there is no longer a need for
blinds, and the first player can choose to bet $10, or to check.
It is possible in Texas Hold'em, and indeed happens reasonably often,
that all players still in the hand will check, meaning that there is no
betting action on the flop. But if someone bets, the players must decide
whether they are going to call or raise, and the same limit on the
number of raises in a round applies.
After the third round betting concludes, the dealer reveals a fourth
community card, which, in Texas Hold'em, is called "the Turn" or "Fourth
Street." In limit Texas Hold'em poker, the size of the betting amount
now doubles, to $20 (which is why this game is called a "10-20" game).
The greater bet size aside, the process of betting and checking is
identical to that on the flop.
After this third round of betting concludes, the dealer reveals the
fifth and final community card, called "the River," or "Fifth Street".
Betting is identical to the pattern used on the third (Turn) round.
At the end of this fourth round of betting, any players still remaining
in the hand turn their cards over. (If at any point during the hand, one
player makes a bet that all others decline to call, the hand is over
immediately, and the player who made the final wager takes the pot
without the need to show his cards.)
In Texas Hold'em, the player who can assemble the best five-card hand,
out of the seven possible (the two in their hands and the five in the
middle) wins the pot. The players can thus use two, one, or none of
their "private" first two cards. Although it is unusual to use none of
one's private cards, it is possible, if the five cards on the board form
a strong hand such as a straight, flush, or full house.
If, for example, two players remained in the Texas Hold'em hand at the
end, one of whose private cards were two kings (K-K), and one of whose
private cards were two aces (A-A), and the board was 5-6-7-8-9, the
players would split the pot, because each has exactly the same nine-high
straight. Before the river card, the player with the two aces had a very
large advantage, but the concluding nine cost him half the pot (as would
have a concluding Four, which also would have put a straight on the
board).
|
|
