Texas Hold Em All

As I said earlier, this is the most popular of games played on television and online at the moment. I think the greatest attraction of this is that it’s no limit. Because of this there is another term needed to be explained from the front page. That’s called All-In.

ALL-IN: When you have less chips than is needed to call you can go all-in which means putting all your chips in. If it is less than the last call then the other players only pay you the equivalent of what you put in if you win. Eg. If the bet is 5000 and you put in 3000 then the other players will still get the 2000 extra back that they put in if you win.

Another way to use All-In is as a great but dangerous bluff. A bluff is when you have a bad hand but think the pot is of good enough value to risk it. If you throw in 100,000 then the player behind you would think twice about calling and maybe going out of the game. Of course there is the occasion where someone behind you has a very good hand, calls and takes you out of the game.

The virtual dealer has a button which is placed in front of the player whose deal it is. If Player3 is the dealer this time then he deals to the person after the big blind (so misses out P4 small blind and P5 big blind) and starts dealing at P6 clockwise.

Texas starts with everyone getting two cards dealt face down to each player. The person to the dealers left is automatically put in for a small blind and the person after a large blind. These blinds are to get the betting started and the large blind is double the small. Depending on how you play the blinds go up either after a certain amount of time of after so many hands, example is £20/40 after 20 hands would go to £30/£60.

The person after the large blind is in the advantageous position of betting first. With a good hand you can take a few people out with a decent enough bet or trap them into betting by just calling. Of course the last person could say he has the advantage of seeing how many people are left in before he decides whether to bet. It depends on how good your hand is really.

After one round of betting which finishes only after everybody left at the table has called the last raise you get the flop. Three cards on put in the middle of the table face up. Another round of betting takes place again till called all round then the TURN card is placed face up next to the flop. Another round of betting is then followed by the last card called the RIVER. After this is the final round of betting. By now you know how good your hand is and whether you think you have enough to win or to try and bluff to win. If not and the other person seems to have a good hand its time to fold and hope you haven’t lost too much.

In a big game for instance say a table starts with eight players, this dwindles after time and that means that smaller hands are still good. The best hand to start off with is two aces then two kings because obviously you have a good pair and a third will see you with a great chance of winning. After that though thoughts are divided. Some would prefer pocket queens or jacks (pocket meaning hidden), others would prefer ace king of the same suit. The reasons are that although the pair of queens is a good hand someone with ace king same suit has a host of cards that could win him the hand. Two queens leaves only two other cards in the pack to help that hand whereas ace king of spades means there’s six cards for a high pair, there’s three tens, jacks and queens for a run and another eleven spades out there for a flush. Although the pair of queens is winning there’s every chance that the ace king could win at the end.

Now cards like a king ten off suit(different suits) against seven other players isn’t much good, not many would bet with it but if you’re only playing against two others then all of a sudden it’s a great hand. There is less chance that one of the other two players has anything better.

Finally you will get down to the last two players which is called Head to Head. In head to head the dealer takes the small blind and the person dealt to first takes the large blind. By then that could be a large amount of money and you need to play some hands, even if bluffing or your chips will dwindle rather quickly. Once your opponent is out of chips you’ve won.

We have Omaha poker on the next page, another popular poker game with a few differences.

HOW TO PLAY POKER