Thursday, January 24, 2008

Texas Hold`em Poker

Texas hold'em (also hold'em, holdem) is the most popular poker variant played in casinos in the United States. In contrast to poker games like stud or draw where each player holds a separate individual hand, hold 'em is a community card game where each player may use any combination of the five community cards and their own two hole cards to make a poker hand.

Hold 'em
is normally played using small and big blind bets – forced bets by two players. Antes (forced contributions by all players) may be used in addition to blinds, particularly in later stages of tournament play. A dealer button is used to represent the player in the dealer position; the dealer button rotates clockwise after each hand, changing the position of the dealer and blinds. The small blind is posted by the player to the left of the dealer and is usually equal to half of the big blind. The big blind, posted by the player to the left of the small blind, is equal to the minimum bet. In tournament poker, the blind/ante structure periodically increases as the tournament progresses. (In some cases, the small blind is some other fraction of a small bet, e.g. $10 is a common small blind when the big blind is $15. The double-blind structure described above a commonly used and more recent adoption.)

How To Play Texas Hold`em Poker

Texas Holdem poker is by far the best game for a beginner to learn. Instead of other poker games like Omaha High or 7 card stud which entail a great many more possibilities for calculating odds and perhaps even trying to count cards, Texas Hold em can be learned in a few minutes by anyone, and you can be playing fairly well with a few hours practice. In order to learn the game, however, you must play and you must play fairly often.

Tournaments

Hold 'em is normally played using small and big blind bets – forced bets by two players. Antes (forced contributions by all players) may be used in addition to blinds, particularly in later stages of tournament play.

Tips & Tricks

One element of poker is deception. Bluffing is the quintessential trick in hold em poker. Of course, the reasoning for a bluff is to deceive the other players into thinking you have a better hand when you actually do not.

Hold`em Poker Rules

Unfortunately, there is no universal set of rules for texas hold em poker. Many individual rules are standard but a sea of nebulous calls still need to be made. In general opinion, the most reliable source for rules questions is and will always be the rules provided by the Tournament Directors Association. The TDA is a group that meets exclusively to expand and update the rules for poker.

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