Texas Hold’em beginner guide
Learn how a hand is played from preflop to showdown, compare the nine hand rankings, work through a pot-odds example and find your chance of hitting your outs. Free to read, no account needed. Start here, then put the ideas into practice.
Last updated
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.
The dealer button marks action order and moves around the table. The small and big blinds create an initial pot. Before the flop, action begins after the big blind; after the flop, it begins with the first active player after the button. Heads-up, the button posts the small blind and acts first preflop, last postflop.
Check when nothing is owed, bet when action is unopened, call to match, raise to increase the wager, or fold to leave the hand. If everyone else folds, the last player wins without a showdown. An all-in player can win only the pots they contributed to.
- Preflop. The blinds are posted and each player receives two private cards. The first betting round begins.
- Flop. Three shared cards arrive, followed by another betting round.
- Turn. A fourth shared card arrives, followed by another betting round.
- River. The fifth shared card arrives and the last betting round takes place.
- Showdown. If more than one player remains, compare the best five-card hands. A hand can end earlier if everyone but one player folds.
New to the language? Look up blinds, the button and position in the glossary. Event and house rules govern details such as minimum raises and when a short all-in reopens the action.
Poker hand rankings, strongest to weakest
Texas Hold’em has nine hand categories, listed here from straight flush down to high card. Any hand in a higher category beats every hand in a lower one. Read each example as a complete five-card hand; within a category, compare its defining ranks, then the remaining kickers.
Straight flush
Five consecutive cards of one suit. Highest card decides.
Four of a kind
Four matching ranks, then one kicker.
Full house
Three of one rank plus a pair. Compare the three first.
Flush
Five of one suit. Compare all five ranks from highest down.
Straight
Five consecutive ranks. A wheel is five-high.
Three of a kind
Three matching ranks plus two kickers.
Two pair
Compare the higher pair, the lower pair, then the kicker.
One pair
One matching pair plus three kickers.
High card
No category above. Compare all five ranks.
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.
Pot odds: what does a call cost?
Pot odds compare the chips needed to call with the pot you would compete for after calling. They tell you a break-even threshold under a model, not the strength of your hand.
The pot is 100. An opponent bets 50. Calling costs you 50, making the final pot 200.
50 ÷ (100 + 50 + 50) = 25%
With no rake or later betting, a call breaks even at 25% equity. At 30% equity, its expected value is 0.30 × 150 − 0.70 × 50 = +10 chips relative to folding. The 30% is an assumed input, not an estimate of a particular hand.
Earlier in a hand, future bets and the possibility of folding change the calculation. Learn the distinction between equity, pot odds and expected value before treating a drawing percentage as a decision rule.
Outs and drawing probability
An out is a card that achieves a specified improvement. With two hole cards and a flop known, 47 cards are unseen. Drawing without replacement means the second card depends on the first: missing nine outs twice has probability (38/47) × (37/46). The complement is about 35.0%. Hitting a flush does not necessarily win on a paired board.
For nine fixed outs from the flop, the chance on the next card alone is 9/47, about 19.1%. The roughly 35.0% chance assumes you see both the turn and river. It says whether one of those outs appears, not whether your hand ultimately wins or a call is profitable.
Read more about outs in the glossary.
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.
Sources & further reading
The explanations are Pokerista Academy teaching material. These reference sources cover the underlying rules and probability concepts; they do not endorse Pokerista or certify its exercises.
- Texas Hold’em rules — PokerStars
- Tournament rules, procedures & addendum — Poker Tournament Directors Association
- Independent and mutually exclusive events — OpenStax · Introductory Statistics 2e
- Poker hand rankings — PokerStars
Put the ideas into practice.
Start with the free introductory courses and save your progress as you learn.
For learning purposes only. Not a gambling app. Guides, not personalized betting advice. No real-money play or guaranteed results. AI can make mistakes. Read the educational disclaimer.