How to Play Texas Hold'em

The Short Version

Texas Hold’em is a poker game built on shared cards. Each player receives two private cards, five community cards are dealt face up in the centre for everyone to use, and there are four rounds of betting in between. When the betting ends, the best five-card poker hand — built from any combination of your two cards and the five shared ones — wins the pot. This page covers the rules of the game only.

What You Need

A standard 52-card deck, a set of chips so bets can be tracked, and 2 to 10 players around one table. You also need a dealer button — any small marker will do — and a betting structure agreed before play: limit (fixed bet sizes), pot-limit (bets capped by the size of the pot), or no-limit (any amount up to your stack). The structure changes how much can be bet, not how the game is played.

Set Up

• The button sits in front of one player and moves one seat to the left after every hand. The button position deals last and acts last in most betting rounds — a built-in advantage that everyone takes turns holding.
• The player immediately left of the button posts the small blind, a forced bet, usually half the big blind. The next player posts the big blind, the full minimum bet for the hand. (In a two-player game, the button posts the small blind and acts first before the flop, then acts last in later rounds — the one structural exception.)
• Each player is dealt two cards face down, starting with the small blind and going clockwise.

How to Play

There are four betting rounds. In each round, on your turn you may fold (give up your hand), check (pass, only if nobody has bet yet in that round), call (match the current bet), or raise (match it and increase it). A round ends when everyone still in the hand has matched the largest bet or folded.

1. Pre-flop. Betting starts with the player left of the big blind. The blinds count as bets already made, so that first player must at least call the big blind to stay in.
2. The flop. One card is burned (dealt face down, out of play), then three community cards are dealt face up. Betting starts with the first active player left of the button.
3. The turn. One card is burned, then a fourth community card is dealt face up. Another betting round, same order.
4. The river. One card is burned, then the fifth and final community card. A last betting round.
5. Showdown. If two or more players remain, hands are revealed and the best five-card hand wins. If betting on the river produced a last bet or raise that was called, the player who made it shows first; otherwise the first active player left of the button shows first. Tied hands split the pot evenly; split odd chips go by table agreement or to the first tied player clockwise from the button.

If at any point only one player remains — everyone else has folded — that player wins the whole pot without showing their cards, and the hand ends immediately.

A note on raises: a raise must at least match the size of the previous bet or raise in that round, unless a player is going all-in for less. A player who runs out of chips is all-in: they stay in the hand, and side pots are formed for betting beyond what they matched (see the dispute settled above).

Scoring

There are no points — hands are decided by the standard poker hand rankings, best to worst:

Within the same rank, ties are broken by the cards themselves: higher sets win, then higher kickers (the unpaired cards). Suits are all equal — there is no suit ranking in Hold’em. A royal flush is simply the highest possible straight flush.

Winning

There is no fixed endpoint in the rules of the game itself: players win and lose pots hand by hand. A home game ends when the table agrees to stop, or when a tournament structure (rising blinds and elimination) leaves one player with all the chips — the tournament format is a wrapper around the same rules, not a different game.

Variations Worth Knowing

• Betting structures are the big variation: fixed-limit, pot-limit, and no-limit are all the same game with different betting caps. No-limit is the televised standard.
• Omaha is the closest relative: four private cards instead of two, and your final hand must use exactly two of them plus exactly three community cards. That “exactly” changes everything.
• Pineapple deals three private cards; you discard one after the flop (in Crazy Pineapple, after betting on the flop). Otherwise, standard Hold’em.
• Short deck (also called 6+) removes the 2s through 5s and adjusts some rankings — a flush beats a full house in most short-deck rule sets. It is a different ranking table, so confirm it before you play.