Texas Hold’em

Texas Hold’em, especially No Limit Hold’em, is by far the most popular of all poker variations today. Each player is dealt two hole cards. The community board consists of five open cards (the flop, turn and river).

To have the best five card poker hand at the showdown, using any combination of your two hole cards and the five community cards, or make everybody else fold before it gets to the showdown. See the hand rankings to determine the best hand.

To indicate the position of the dealer, a disk (dealer button) is used that moves clockwise around the table after each game. Two cards face down are dealt to all players, starting with the player to the immediate left of the dealer button.

After the first betting round (pre-flop), the flop is dealt: three cards face up on the table. After a second round of betting, the turn is dealt, another card face up. The third round of betting takes place and finally a last card is dealt face up, the river. The fourth and last round of betting follows before eventually the remaining players turn over their hole cards to determine the winner of the pot (Showdown).

The first and the second player sitting to the dealers left have to post the small blind and big blind respectively. These are forced bets to make the pot worth fighting for. In cash games the size of the blinds is dependent on the actual limit. For example on a €0.10/€0.25 NL table the small blind is €0.10 and the big blind is €0.25. On cash game tables the blinds do not change. In tournaments, the blinds increase according to the tournament structure. You can see the tournament structure by clicking on Info in the tournament lobby.