This article talks about Texas Hold’em only simply because of the very fact that it is now the most popular form of trusted online gambling agency poker worldwide. Likewise if you would enter any off-line casino and sit down on a poker table it’s very very likely to be Texas Hold’em again. Within Texas Hold’em you’ve got the options of playing tournaments or cash games, limit or no limit. Playing tournaments in usually not completely different from playing cash games with regard to the poker rules applied, yet your poker strategy must be quite different if you ever arrange to be a successful player in the foreseeable future. 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 point of view is the fact that Texas Hold’em is the most exciting and easiest to learn variation of poker and so ideal for novices. 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’ll 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 a minimum two and also a maximum of 11 players. The dealer will be 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 can be forced to place a bet (blinds). The dealer also another function: He needs to push the game and make sure that everything is running correctly. He is responsible for the correct bets and that the 2 players left from the dealer place the small and big blind ahead of the start of almost every round. Then each player is given two cards (hole cards) by the dealer and the first betting round will be close to to start.

The very first betting round begins with the player left of the big blind. In the first betting round only the 2 players with the small and big blind are skipped as their first bets are the blinds. The very first player after the big blind is under the gun. What that means is that he is forced to do the very first move without having any opportunity at all to gather information from other players.