This article talks about Texas Hold’em only simply because of the truth that it is now the best type of online poker worldwide. Likewise if you would enter any off-line quality casino and sit down on a poker table it’s very prone to be Texas Hold’em again. Within Texas Hold’em you have the options of playing tournaments or cash games, limit or no limit. Playing tournaments in usually not completely different from playing cash games when it comes to the poker rules applied, yet your poker strategy must be quite different if you ever plan to be a successful player down the road. Further known poker games are Card-Stud, Omaha High/Low, Draw-Poker and Razz where any of these game types would need to be described in a separate article.

My personal viewpoint is the fact that Texas Hold’em is the most exciting and easiest to learn variation of poker and as a consequence ideal for a beginner. You get a lot of action and there is a huge range of possibilities to win or lose a hand. A famous saying is: “You only need one minute learn Texas Hold’em but you need your entire life to learn it”.

Dealer, hole cards and blinds

The dealer shuffles a deck of 52 cards without Joker. The game can be played with at the least two and also a maximum of 11 players. The dealer is usually a player himself. The dealer button moves clockwise from round to round. The dealer button is a big chip that lies in front of the dealer. The button also defines the two players that will be forced to place a bet (blinds). The dealer also another function: He needs to push the game and ensure that everything is running correctly. He is responsible for the correct bets and that the two players left from the dealer place the small and big blind prior to the start of each and every round. Then each player is given two cards (hole cards) through the dealer and also the first betting round is about to start.

The first betting round begins with the player left of the big blind. In the first betting round only the two players with the small and big blind are skipped as their first bets are the blinds. The first player after the big blind is under the gun. What that implies is the fact that he is forced to do the first move without the need of any opportunity at all to gather information from other players.