Poker school

If you have never played, read the rules and the hand rankings first. That takes about twenty minutes and is enough to sit down without holding anyone up. Then play a few dozen hands at the Scribes’ Table, where the blinds are 50 and 100 debens.

After that, the guides follow the questions that come up at the table. Which two cards are worth playing: starting hands. Why the same cards are a raise on the button and a fold in the first seat: positions. Whether to pay for a draw: outs and pot odds, with the odds calculator to check any spot. Where the chips go when someone is all-in: side pots and split pots.

The glossary explains the slang you will see in chat. Bluffing for beginners covers the one skill no chart can teach, and table etiquette is about playing nicely with the people around you.

• Real rules, enforced by code. No-Limit Hold’em with blinds, minimum raises, all-ins and side pots, as in any card room. When a guide quotes a rule, it is the rule the server applies.
• Three stakes, two sizes. The Scribes’, Priests’ and Pharaoh’s tables have blinds of 50/100, 500/1,000 and 5,000/10,000, with 5 or 9 seats each.
• 15 seconds per move. Enough time to think, short enough that a hand never drags.
• AI opponents wear an “AI” mark. They fill empty seats when few people are around and give a seat up to a person between hands.
• Every hand at the showdown is turned face up. You see what your opponents played, and the table names the winning hand.
• Free debens only. Nothing to deposit, nothing to cash out. A mistake costs chips, and the Ra Boat brings more every ten minutes.

The poker engine that runs our tables also worked out these pages. We used it to deal two million random hands for each of the 169 starting hands, to play out every turn and river for the draws in the outs guide, and to replay each side-pot example chip by chip. Every guide says how its numbers were made, so you can check them.