| |
Rules
and Strategies for Texas Hold'em
Walk into virtually any public cardroorn in America, and
you'll find a game of Texas hold'em in progress. Texas
hold'em is the single most popular form of poker played
today.
Let's start with the basics.
In Texas hold'em, each player gets two cards to start
with. There's a round of betting, and then three cards
are turned over in the middle of the table. These cards
(collectively called the flop) are common cards or community
cards; they're part of everybody's hand. Thus, if you
start with an ace and a king (A-K) and the flop presents
you with another ace, another king and a ten (A-K-T),
then your hand so far is two pair, aces and kings, with
a ten kicker. Another player who starts with a pair of
queens (Q-Q) would only have two queens with an ace kicker
at this point, so you would have the best hand. After
the flop, there's a second round of betting, and then
another common card, called the turn card, is revealed.
If the turn card in this case were a queen, your hand
would not have improved; you'd still have your two pair
and your ten kicker. But your opponent would now have
three queens, and you'd be in trouble! After a third round
of betting, the fifth community card, the river card,
is placed on the board.
There's a fourth and final round of betting, and then
those players still left in the pot show down their hands.
The best five-card hand out of the seven available between
each player's hand and the board is the winner. So if
that river card were an ace, your hand would have improved
to aces full, a full house comprised of three aces and
two kings, just narrowly edging out your opponent, with
her three queens and two aces, or queens full.
In most public card rooms, the betting is structured,
which means that there are fixed amounts you can bet on
any round. The most common structure allows for a certain
bet, say $2, on the first two betting rounds, and double
that amount ($4 in this example) on the last two rounds.
So if you sat down in a game of $5-10 limit hold'em, you'd
know to bet (or raise) $5 before and after the flop, and
$10 on the turn and the river.
Some casinos offer spread limit betting, such as $1-4-8-8.
In this variation, you can bet anything from $1 to $4
before and after the flop, and anything up to $8 on the
turn and the river. Obviously you'll want to know the
betting limits before you sit down to play, but where
will you get this information? You can ask the floor manager,
of course, or any of the other cardroom employees, but
if you want to gather information on the sly, just look
for a little brass plate on the table to the right of
where the dealer sits. There you'll find the name of the
game being played at that table, the betting limits imposed,
and also the structure of the house rake.
The rake is the money that the house takes out of each
pot. It's payment, if you will, for all the services that
the house provides, including a dealer, cards and chips,
tables and chairs, security, and often amenities such
as free drinks or food. A typical rake is 5% of the pot
up to a certain ceiling, such as $3 per pot. Sometimes
the rake is taken out of the pot directly, in other cardrooms,
each player in turn posts a collection before the hand
begins. There are strategy considerations to be made,
depending on whether you're in a rake game or a collection
game, but we'll get to those later. For now, all you need
to do is watch a hand or two being dealt and notice whether
the dealer is collecting the rake before the hand begins
or while the hand is underway.
Texas hold'em is known as a button game. That is, there's
a round disc, called a dealer button, which moves from
player to player, in a clockwise fashion with each hand.
Though players don't deal for themselves in public cardrooms,
the button represents which player would be the dealer
if the deal were advanced from player to player as the
game went along. This is important because some players
to the left of the button have to post blind bets, or
blinds, at the start of each hand.
In most hold'em games, you'll find two blinds. The small
blind, to the dealer's immediate left, is usually half
the amount of the small bet in a fixed limit game. The
big blind, to the immediate left of the small blind, is
usually equal to the full amount of the small bet in a
fixed limit game. If you were playing $4-8 hold'em, the
small blind would post $2 and the big blind would post
$4. In the case of a game where half the single bet is
not an even amount, the small blind will post either 1/3
or 2/3 of the single bet. In a $15-30 game, then, the
small blind would post either $5 or $10, depending on
the house rules at that particular casino.
The purpose of the blind bet is to get at least some money
into every pot. If there were no blinds, then no player
would enter the pot with anything except the very best
hands. There would be very little betting; the game would
get dull and probably die. With the blind bet, each player
takes his turn entering the pot involuntarily. Then the
other players, acting after the blinds, can decide whether
they want to compete for the blinds' money by contributing
bets of their own. The blinds, then, serve to stimulate
the action in a button-style poker game.
As you'll soon see, position is very important in Texas
hold'em. The longer you have to act, the bigger an advantage
you gain, with the players in the blinds holding the most
vulnerable position, and the players near or on the button
having the biggest positional edge. Even before we get
to that, though, you can see that players posting the
blinds are entering the pot involuntarily, with hands
that are probably no better than average. That's why the
button moves with every hand: so that each player takes
his or her fair turn at posting the blinds and at being
in late position, near or on the button.
To practice Texas hold’em, deal yourself a bunch
of two-card hands and ask yourself which you think are
the strongest hands and why. Also think about why a player
in late position has an advantage over a player in early
position. Finally, find a hold'em game in a cardroom (or
online cardroom) and take note of the start hands players
in that game favor. It won’t be long before you can
take a seat among them. |
