Texas Hold'em

Two cards of your own, five in the middle, and four rounds of betting to decide who is telling the truth. Two to ten players.

How a hand runs

Everyone is dealt two private cards — your hole cards. Five community cards are then turned face up in the middle in stages, and everybody builds their best five-card hand out of the seven available. You may use both hole cards, one, or neither.

There is a round of betting after each of those. If two or more players are still in after the river, the hands are shown and the best one takes the pot. If everybody else folds at any point, the last player standing takes it without showing anything.

What you can do on your turn

• Check — pass, only possible when nobody has bet.
• Bet — put chips in when nobody has yet.
• Call — match the bet in front of you.
• Raise — match it and increase it.
• Fold — give up the hand and anything you have already put in.
• All in — every chip you have left. You can still win what you were able to cover.

The blinds, and why they climb

Two players post forced bets before any cards are seen — the small blind and the big blind — and the position moves round the table each hand, so everybody pays their share. Without them nobody would ever need to play a hand.

They also climb, which is what stops a table lasting forever. The host picks how fast:

The ladder runs 10/20, 20/40, 30/60, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200 and upward, doubling once it reaches the top of the list. Starting stacks are 500, 1000 or 2000 chips, chosen when the table is made.

Hand rankings, strongest first

When two players hold the same kind of hand, the higher one wins — and if those tie too, the next card outside the hand decides it. That card is the kicker, and it settles more pots than beginners expect: two players with a pair of kings are separated by whatever they hold beside them.

An ace can be high or low in a straight: A-K-Q-J-10 is the top one, and 5-4-3-2-A is the bottom one, usually called the wheel.

How the match ends

By default a table plays until one player holds every chip. A host can instead cap it at 10, 20 or 30 hands, after which the chip leader takes it. Players who run out of chips are out, and finishing order is the order people busted — so surviving longer is worth something even when you do not win.

Strategy that actually pays

Fold more hands than feels comfortable

The single biggest leak in casual poker is playing too many hands. Most two-card combinations are worth nothing from most positions, and folding them costs you only the blinds you would have lost anyway.

Position is information

Acting last on every street after the flop means you see what everyone else does before you commit. The same two cards are worth substantially more in late position than in early, and that is not a subtlety — it is most of the game.

Count what the board threatens

Three cards of a suit on the flop means somebody may have a flush. Four to a straight means somebody may have it. Your two pair does not get stronger because you like it; ask what a raise is telling you the board allows.

Watch the blinds, not just the pot

Once blinds climb past about a tenth of your stack, waiting for a perfect hand stops being patient and starts being terminal. Short stacks have to act before the blinds eat them.

What a finished match is worth on the leaderboard

Only where you finished counts, never the chips you finished with. Poker seats up to ten, so the top-half rule matters more here than anywhere else in this collection.

Half is rounded up, so at a nine-player table the top five score and at ten it is still five. That is deliberate: a ranking that stops rewarding you for finishing fourth of ten is a ranking that tells you to stop trying.