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If you have an interest in poker but have never played, or if you have played but are unsure of certain details, you have come to the right place. Here we will outline some of the basic rules to play poker, whether for a casual ring game with friends or a full-on online poker Texas Hold’em tournament.
To be specific, poker is not a game but an entire family of games which share certain rules in common. We’ll cover specific additions and deviations from these rules by specific variations in later pages, but for now we will focus more on the general similarities.
Everything in poker, from dealing to betting and playing your cards, moves clockwise around the table.
Each player places the minimum bet (“ante up” or “pay the blinds“) to set up the pot (the combined bets of all participating players) and to indicate participation in the current hand.
Each round, the previous hand’s dealer turns over the deck to the current hand’s dealer; in casinos and live tournaments, a “dealer button” indicates the dealer. In online poker, the dealer functions are usually carried out by the software (i.e., usually more quickly and accurately).
The dealer passes out cards one by one, himself last, until everyone has the appropriate number of cards for that particular poker variation. The orientation of the cards on the table (face-up, face-down, or community cards) depend on the variation as well.
When everyone has the cards, the first betting round begins. The player to the right of the dealer makes the initial bet (usually, but also depends on the particular variation) and each next player in line can choose to raise (increase the bet), call (match the bet and possibly end the hand), or fold (surrender and leave the hand).
Between betting rounds, changes typically occur that affect players’ hands. In Draw poker, each player may discard and then replace (from the dealer’s deck) any of their unwanted cards to try to make a better hand. In Stud (including community variations like Hold’em), face-down cards are revealed, usually one per round.
If everyone else folds, the betting player wins the hand (no matter what his cards are worth). If there are two or more players who continue to bet, they must ultimately show their hands. Poker hand ranking is discussed on our poker hands page.
In a ring game, the winner of the hand takes the pot. In a tournament, the winner may advance and one or more of the losers may be eliminated from further rounds (depending on the tournament structure).