Texas Hold’em rules

Each player gets two private cards. Five shared cards are dealt face up in the middle: three at once (the flop), then one (the turn) and one more (the river). There is a round of betting before the flop and after each street. You win the pot with the best five-card hand at the end, or by betting until everyone else folds.

You may use both of your cards, one of them or none: the best five out of seven is what counts. That is the whole game. The rest of this page explains the order of play, how much you can bet and what the table does when the hand is over.

A round marker, the dealer button, marks the player who acts last after the flop. It moves one seat to the left after every hand, so everyone gets a turn. The two players to its left post forced bets before any cards are dealt: the small blind and the big blind, which is twice as big. At the Scribes’ Table that is 50 and 100 debens.

The blinds make sure every hand has something in the middle worth fighting for. Without them the best strategy would be to sit and wait for aces forever.

With only two players in the hand the order changes. The button posts the small blind and acts first before the flop; the big blind acts first on every street after it.

At our tables the button simply moves to the next player who is dealt in. A newcomer joins from the next hand and does not post an extra blind. A player who cannot cover a blind posts what he has and is all-in; everyone else still has to call the full big blind.

The dealer gives one card to each player, starting with the player to the left of the button and going clockwise, then a second card the same way. The button gets the last card of each round. These are your hole cards. At our tables they are sent to your screen only, and nobody else sees them unless the hand goes to a showdown.

Before each street of shared cards the dealer burns one card, putting it aside face down. It does not change the odds; it is a habit from live games that stops anyone glimpsing the next card. Our engine burns cards too, so the deck runs in the same order as at a real table.

1. Preflop, right after the hole cards. The player to the left of the big blind acts first. The big blind acts last and may raise even if everyone has only called.
2. Flop. Three shared cards are turned face up. From now on the first player still in the hand to the left of the button acts first.
3. Turn. A fourth shared card and another round of betting.
4. River. The fifth and last shared card and the final round.

A round ends when everyone still in the hand has put in the same amount, or is all-in, and everyone has had at least one chance to act. If all players but one fold at any point, that player takes the pot at once and no cards are shown.

In the game the buttons read Fold, Check or Call, and Bet or Raise to. Next to them sit a slider and quick sizes — Min, ½ pot, ¾, Pot and Max — where Max is the all-in. Our table always writes raises as “raise to”: the number is your total bet for this round, not the amount you add to it.

We play No-Limit Hold’em: at any moment you may bet anything from the minimum up to every chip in front of you. The minimum bet is the big blind. A raise must be at least as large as the previous bet or raise in the same round.

Here is how it works at the Scribes’ Table, where the big blind is 100. A player raises to 350, which is a raise of 250. Anyone who wants to re-raise has to go to at least 600: 350 plus another 250. If someone then makes it 1,200, the step becomes 600, and the next raise must reach at least 1,800.

One exception confuses a lot of players. If someone goes all-in for less than a full raise, the bet goes up, but the players who have already acted in that round may not raise again — they can only call the difference or fold. Players who have not acted yet can still raise. Our table applies this to the chip, and the guide to side pots walks through it with numbers.

Nobody can push you out of a hand for lack of chips. If a bet is bigger than your stack, you call with everything you have. From each opponent you can then win only as much as you put in yourself, and the chips the others keep betting form a side pot that only they can win.

If nobody matches a bet, the unmatched part goes straight back to the player who made it. When fewer than two players can still bet, the remaining shared cards are dealt without any more betting and the hands are shown.

If two or more players are still in after the river betting, they show their cards. Each player’s hand is the best five cards out of their two hole cards and the five on the board — the order of hands is in our hand rankings. The best hand wins the pot; equal hands split it.

• Suits never break a tie. A♥ K♥ and A♣ K♣ on the same board are equal hands.
• Only five cards count. A higher sixth card changes nothing; the tricky cases are collected in kickers and split pots.
• If the board itself is the best hand for everyone, all the players still in split the pot.
• An ace can be high (10-J-Q-K-A) or low (A-2-3-4-5), but a straight cannot go round the corner: Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

In card rooms the last player to bet or raise shows first, and a loser may throw his cards away unseen. At our tables every hand that reaches the showdown is turned face up at once, and the table names the winning combination. When a pot does not divide evenly, the leftover chips go one at a time to the winners, starting with the first one to the left of the button.

Four players at the Scribes’ Table, 10,000 debens each. You are on the button. Ahmose is in the small blind, Nefertari in the big blind, and Ramses is first to act.

1. Blinds. Ahmose posts 50 and Nefertari 100. Everyone gets two cards; yours are A♠ J♠.
2. Preflop. Ramses calls 100. You raise to 350. Ahmose folds and loses his 50. Nefertari calls 250 more, and so does Ramses. The pot is 1,100: three times 350 plus Ahmose’s 50.
3. Flop: K♠ 8♠ 3♦. Nefertari checks and Ramses bets 600. You hold four spades — a flush draw, with nine spades still unseen — and you call. Nefertari folds. The pot is 2,300.
4. Turn: 2♣. No help. Ramses bets 1,200 and you call. The pot is 4,700.
5. River: Q♠. Your flush arrives: A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 8♠. Ramses checks, you bet 3,000 and he calls. The pot is 10,700.
6. Showdown. Ramses shows K♦ 10♦, a pair of kings. Your flush takes the 10,700. You put in 5,150 in total, so you are 5,550 up; Ramses is 5,150 down, Nefertari 350 and Ahmose 50.

Two lessons hide in this hand. Your calls on the flop and the turn were a bet on nine cards, and whether such calls pay is the subject of outs and pot odds. And after the flop Ramses had to act first on every street, while you saw what he did before you decided. That is the advantage of the button, explained in positions.

We played this exact hand through our poker engine with the same cards and bets. The pots and the final stacks above are what it produced.

• Seats. Every table has 5 or 9 seats. A hand starts when at least two players with chips are seated and at least one of them is a person.
• Buy-in. From 10 to 200 big blinds, 100 by default. You can top up between hands, but never above the table maximum.
• Time. 15 seconds per move. When time runs out, the table checks for you if it can and folds if it cannot. Miss three turns in a row and you are marked as stepped away until you press Return. After ten minutes away you leave the table and your chips go back to your purse.
• AI opponents. When few people are around, computer players fill seats: up to three at a nine-seat table and two at a five-seat one. Each wears an “AI” mark on its nameplate, never sees your cards and gives its seat up to a person between hands.
• Lost connection. If your connection drops, your seat waits for you for 30 seconds.
• History. The Last hand button shows the previous hand move by move: who bet what, which cards came and who won which pot.

All chips are free debens. They cannot be bought or cashed out, so the only things at stake are pride and a seat at the Pharaoh’s Table.

• “Raise to” is not “raise by”. A raise to 600 over a bet of 350 adds 250 to the bet, not 600.
• The board can play. If the five shared cards make a straight and you cannot beat it, you still split the pot.
• A higher sixth card does not count. Only the best five cards decide.
• You cannot raise yourself. If nobody raises after you, the round is over. The big blind before the flop is the exception: his bet was forced, not chosen, so he still gets a turn.
• Folding when you could check gives the pot away. If nobody has bet, checking is never worse than folding.