How to play Texas Hold’em: a beginner guide

How Texas Hold’em works

Texas Hold’em is a game of decisions under uncertainty. The cards are random; what you choose to do with the information is the part you can study.

Each player receives two hole cards. Up to five community cards form the board: three on the flop, one on the turn and one on the river. At showdown, use the best five cards from the seven available. You can use both, one or neither hole card. Equal best-five hands split the pot; suits do not break ties.

A hand has up to four betting rounds: preflop, then one each after the flop, the turn and the river. The steps below go through them in order, from the blinds to the showdown.

Dealing, the blinds and the betting rounds, step by step

In a card room, a dealer who is not playing handles the cards. A disc called the dealer button marks which seat counts as the dealer for the hand, and that seat fixes the order of everything else. The examples below use blinds of 1 and 2 imaginary chips.

1. Blinds. Before any cards are dealt, the first player clockwise from the button posts the small blind and the next player posts the big blind, usually twice as much: here, 1 and 2 chips. Some games also use an ante.
2. Preflop. Every player receives two face-down hole cards, and the button is dealt the last card. The player to the left of the big blind, under the gun, acts first. The big blind counts as a bet, so each player must call 2, raise to at least 4 or fold. The big blind acts last and, if nobody has raised, may check or raise: this is the option.
3. Flop. The dealer discards a burn card face down, then turns three community cards face up. From now on, the first player still in the hand to the left of the button acts first, and the button, if still in the hand, acts last.
4. Turn. After another burn card, a fourth community card is turned face up and another betting round follows.
5. River. After a final burn card, the fifth community card is turned face up and the last betting round takes place.
6. Showdown. If two or more players are left after the river betting, they compare their best five-card hands, as described in how a hand is won. A hand ends earlier if everyone but one player folds.
7. The button moves. After every hand the button moves one seat clockwise, so the blinds and the advantage of acting last pass around the table.

How many players can play Texas Hold’em?

A game between two players is heads-up, a six-max table seats up to six, and a full-ring table seats nine or ten. Apart from the heads-up changes below, the rules are the same at every size.

Table size changes how often the blinds reach you: with every seat filled, you post each blind once every six hands at six-max and once every nine hands at a nine-handed table. It also changes how many players can still act after you, which is what position describes.

Heads-up play changes the order of the blinds and the action: the button posts the small blind, acts first before the flop and acts last on the flop, turn and river.

Positions: who acts first?

Your position is your place in the order of action, set by where you sit relative to the button. At a six-max table the seats, in preflop order, are under the gun, hijack, cutoff, button, small blind and big blind; from the flop on, the button acts last. Acting later means you have seen more of the other players’ decisions before you make yours.

The guide to poker positions names every seat at six-max and nine-handed tables and shows how the order changes heads-up.

No-limit betting basics

“No-limit” describes the betting structure, not the card game: you may bet any amount from the minimum up to all the chips in front of you. The rules below follow the TDA tournament rules and standard card-room rules. Events and home games can set their own, so check the house rules before you play.

The five actions

Check

Pass without betting. Allowed only when you owe nothing to stay in the hand, such as the big blind when nobody has raised.

Bet

Put chips in when nobody has bet yet on this street.

Call

Match the current bet to stay in the hand.

Raise

Match the current bet and increase it. In this guide “raise to 6” means 6 chips in total for the street, not 6 more.

Fold

Give up your cards and any claim to the pot.

Minimum bets and raises

The minimum bet is normally the size of the big blind, and it stays the same on every street. A raise must add at least as much as the largest full bet or raise already made in the same betting round. At blinds of 1 and 2, calling preflop costs 2 and the smallest raise is to 4. On the flop, if one player bets 10 and another raises to 25, a raise of 15, the next raise must be to at least 40. No-limit has no cap on the number of raises.

All-in and table stakes

You can bet only the chips in front of you when the hand began; this is called table stakes. If you cannot match a bet, you can still call all-in for what you have. You can then win from each opponent only as much as you put in yourself, and further bets go into a side pot you cannot win.

When does a short all-in reopen the betting?

An all-in that adds less than a full raise does not reopen the betting for players who have already acted, unless they now face at least a full raise.

Hand rankings at a glance

At showdown, each player’s best five cards are compared, and any hand in a higher category beats every hand in a lower one. From best to worst: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair and high card.

See every hand with examples, tie-break rules, worked showdowns and exact frequencies on the poker hand rankings page, or print the hand rankings chart.

A royal flush is the ace-high straight flush, not an additional category. An ace can be high in 10–J–Q–K–A or low in A–2–3–4–5; it cannot wrap around in Q–K–A–2–3. When the board supplies everyone’s best five cards, the pot is shared.

How is a hand of Texas Hold’em won?

A pot is won in one of two ways: every other player folds, or you hold the best hand at the showdown. A pot can also be shared.

• Everyone else folds. The last player left wins the pot and does not have to show their cards.
• Showdown. If two or more players remain after the river betting, the hands are compared. When nobody is all-in, the last player to bet or raise on the river shows first; if nobody bet on the river, the player who acted first on the river does. When a player is all-in, every hand is turned face up as soon as the betting is complete, even if that happens before the river. The cards decide the winner, not what a player announces.
• Best five from seven. Each hand is the best five of a player’s seven cards, chosen as described in how Texas Hold’em works. Within a category, compare the ranks that define the hand, then the kickers. On J♠ 8♦ 8♣ 5♥ Q♠, A♣ J♦ and J♥ 3♦ both make two pair, jacks and eights, so the fifth card decides. The second hand’s best fifth card is the board’s Q♠, not its own 3♦, and the first hand’s ace beats it.
• Split pots. If the best hands are identical, the pot is divided equally. Under TDA rules, a chip that cannot be divided goes to the tied player in the first seat to the left of the button, so a 41-chip pot splits 20 and 21.
• The board plays. Sometimes the five community cards are everyone’s best hand. With 2♥ 2♣ on A♠ K♥ Q♦ J♣ 10♠, your best five is the board’s ace-high straight, and all 990 two-card hands an opponent could hold tie it. To claim a share, turn your cards face up: under TDA rules you must show both hole cards to play the board.
• Side pots. When a player is all-in for less than the others, each pot is awarded separately. If A is all-in for 30 and B and C each put in 80, the main pot is 90 and any of the three can win it; the side pot of 100 can be won only by B or C.

Pot odds: what does a call cost?

With no rake or later betting, the call breaks even if it wins 25% of the time: a price, not a measure of your hand’s strength.

The guide to pot odds works through the calculation step by step and has a calculator, and the free Pot odds made simple course lets you practise it.

Outs and drawing probability

An out is an unseen card that completes a specified improvement. After the flop 47 cards are unseen, so with nine outs the chance of hitting on the turn is 9/47, about 19.1%. If you see both the turn and the river, you miss twice with probability 38/47 × 37/46, so you hit about 35.0% of the time; that is the chance of making your hand, not of winning the pot.

The poker outs chart gives the exact figures for 1 to 20 outs.

Starting hands

There are 52 × 51 ÷ 2 = 1,326 unordered starting-card combinations. Grouping equivalent preflop suit patterns produces 169 hand classes: 13 pairs, 78 suited and 78 offsuit. A pair has six combinations, a suited non-pair four, and an offsuit non-pair twelve. Known cards remove combinations, so a range must be updated as information arrives.

Read more about ranges, then explore the poker mathematics courses.

Common beginner mistakes

Most early errors come from the rules and from reading the board, not from strategy. Each mistake below comes with a study habit you can practise away from the table.

• Acting out of turn. Folding or betting before the action reaches you gives information away, and in a card room the action can bind you. Habit: before each street, say who acts first and who acts last.
• Unclear bets. Under TDA rules a raise must be pushed out in one motion, or its full amount announced before any chips go in; adding chips in several movements, a string raise, is not allowed. Habit: say your action and total, such as “raise to 45”, before moving chips.
• Misreading the board. It is easy to miss a flush or straight that the board makes, or to count a kicker that is not part of your best five cards. Habit: write down each player’s best five cards before comparing hands.
• Throwing cards away at showdown. A hand counts only when both cards are face up and readable; discarded cards may be ruled dead. Habit: table both cards and let the dealer read them.
• Leaving your own call out of the price. In the pot odds example, dividing the 50-chip call by the 150 chips already in the pot gives 33% instead of 25%. Habit: write the final pot, including your call, before dividing.
• Counting every out as a winner. With A♥ Q♥ against 8♣ 8♦ on J♥ 8♥ 3♣ 2♦ and one card to come, nine hearts complete your flush, but 3♥ and 2♥ also give the opponent a full house: only seven of them leave you with the best hand. Habit: after counting outs, remove the ones that still lose.
• Judging a decision by one result. A single hand is weak evidence about decision quality, because chance decides many pots. Habit: review the choice using only what you knew when you made it.