Trying to understand the rules of poker can be confusing, largely due to the many different variants of poker games and the confusingly similar but misleading information on the Internet.
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Here we are going to simplify poker rules and explain to you the basic rules and how they vary across different formats of poker games.
There are literally hundreds of variants of poker games, most of them are hardly played and the list can probably be cut down to less than 10 games that are regularly played today, the most common being Texas Holdem Poker.
Most poker games can be broken into 3 categories:
Obviously there are different variants of poker games because they all have different rules so it is impossible to comprehensively cover everything in this article.
So….. below you will find the basic poker rules and concepts that apply to most poker games. Read and digest these and then, after you have decided which poker game you want to learn to play you can head over to our Poker Games & Rules section to get a more detailed guide for the game you have chosen.
Cards are dealt to each player depending on the rules of the individual game you are playing. After the cards are dealt there will be a series of betting rounds where each player in turn is given a choice of the following options.
Each betting round is complete when all players have either called the highest bet, or folded their hands leaving only one active player (the player who made the highest bet) – then the next cards are dealt and another betting round may start.
There are two ways to win a hand of Poker.
For more information see our section on the poker hand rankings
In general there are two types of cards available to players:
Depending on the rules of the individual game you are playing, Cards are either dealt “face up” so everyone can see them or “face down” so only the player who they have been dealt to can see them.
How a hand is made up will vary depending on which poker game you are playing, but to give you an idea lets look at an example from the most popular form of Poker – Texas Holdem Poker.
In Texas Holdem each player is dealt two “Hole” cards – these cards are dealt face down and only the player knows what the cards are.
Here are the hole cards we have been dealt.
During the course of the hand a total of 5 community cards are dealt “face up” for everyone to see in the middle of the table. These community cards are shared and available for all players to use in their hands.
Here are the community cards:
So there are now a total of 7 cards available to us and we take the best 5 card hand from those 7 cards.
In this hand we have two Aces (a pair) so our best hand is the pair of Aces followed by the next three highest cards:
The above is a very good introduction to the basic rules of poker and hopefully cuts through some of the confusion on the subject that a normal google search can produce.
Now you have a basic understanding of poker rules you should continue to look through the other articles in the Poker for Beginners section to continue to get a good introduction to poker.Once you have done that then it will be time to choose a game to learn by heading over to our Poker Games & Rules section – most people start out with Texas Holdem as this is the most widely played, but its up to you.
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