A Guide to Beginners Poker

Back to basics with tips and tricks for beginners poker

Poker is a card game that takes maybe 10 minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. It’s not just the cards you’re playing – it’s the person! Additionally, Poker per se is not just a game; it’s a game genre.

There are many poker games including Texas Holdem (one of the most popular online poker games around), Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Five Card Draw, and others. All of these poker games have one thing in common, that they use the general rules of poker.

In this ‘how to play poker’ beginners guide, we keep things brief and only give you the basics regarding how to play poker in our many of our recommended poker rooms, which have their own personal poker reviews.

But first, you need to know the ranking of poker hands. Let’s take a look:

Poker hand ranking

Your first step in mastering the basics of online poker is to study these card rankings carefully so that you know where you stand.

JUST PLAY POKER

How to play poker :

“Texas Holdem No Limit” is the world’s most popular poker game - so we’ll major on this.

Firstly, depending where you are playing and what type of tournament it is, you are given ‘chips’. These chips are your ‘stake money’ so to speak. The amount varies.

So that there is money ‘in the pot’ to actually win, two of the players on the table (if it’s a multi table tournament or MTT) must put in compulsory stakes called ‘blinds’ before the cards are dealt. Why? Because, if everyone on the table were to fold, there would be no chips to win!

The first person to the dealer’s left posts the ‘small blind’ and the next person posts the ‘big blind’. The amounts are determined by the game you intend to play in, and vary according to the room/venue where you are playing.

For example, the first ‘level’ may start at €10/20 so, respectively, that’s what the small and big blind positions have to be. Blinds will increase at pre-determined time intervals to following ‘levels’ thereafter, €15/30, €20/40 etc.

In every game there’s a ‘dealer’. To determine which of the players should be the dealer, a playing card is dealt to each person and he/she with the highest ranking card takes on the role.

JUST PLAY POKER

At the end of each game, the ‘dealer’ moves to the left and a new person takes over. The dealer is always represented by a white chip known as a “ white button” – hence the expression, “on the button”. However, during a real tournament, a person would deal the cards and not you personally.

Once the blinds are in and the dealer is ‘appointed’… ‘let the game’ begin and on with your poker face!

Every person is dealt two cards that are faced down for only the player (or you) to see. These are referred to as pocket or hole cards.

Then begins a round of ‘pre-flop’ betting with the first person to the left of the big blind committing first. This person, ‘under the gun’ as it is known in the poker world, has the first choice of folding, calling or raising. If they call the bet they have to put the same amount of chips in as the ‘big blind’. If they raise, they have to raise more than the big blind. And if they fold, they give their unseen cards to the dealer unless they choose to reveal them to the other players.

JUST PLAY POKER

Betting continues around the table with calling, raising, re-raising or folding until it is the turn of the “small blind” who either can fold, call an amount equal to the latest raise or re-raise. The same applies to the big blind.

At this point, the players that are left in this game will see what is known as the ‘Flop’! These are three more cards that are dealt face up by the dealer in the centre of the table. These are called the community cards.

Betting then starts again by checking (which means not betting at this point), or calling the same bet if someone has placed a bet, raising, re-raising or folding.

Following this, a fourth card is dealt face up which is called the ‘Turn’. Then a further round of betting/folding begins, once again similar to that after the ‘Flop’.

Next comes the last card (assuming no one has won because all the rest have folded), which is now called the fifth card or ‘River’, and is placed again face up. Now there are five community cards facing upwards in the middle of the table.

Another round of betting continues by considering the five cards on the table and the two in your hand, but only using five from all of the seven cards until there is an eventual winner of the ‘pot’, thus increasing the player’s ‘chips’ accordingly.

Accruing chips hand after hand is the object of the game so that you get into the money!

JUST PLAY POKER

After various ‘levels’ as the game continues, as well as blinds going into the pot, each player will have to put in ‘antes’ which are designated amounts that start low and grow so that the pot becomes even larger.

In Pot-Limit Hold’em, the amount that is put in depends on the limit. In fixed-limit poker, the big blind puts up a bet equal to the small limit. The small blind puts up half that amount. So if the limit is 5/10, the big blind is 5 and the small blind is 2.50. This is not the same as a no-limit or pot-limit poker game where the bets are also limited to the ‘pot’.

So in a nutshell, that’s Texas Hold’em. Simple to grasp but difficult to master!

I bet you fancy a go now don’t you? If you do, why not play at one of LoveAGamble’s preferred sites by clicking here and choosing a poker room!

We've done the hard work for you! It’s not easy choosing from the hundreds of online poker rooms out there but now with LoveAGamble, you don’t have to. Click here to check out our online poker games reviews.

NB: We only recommend the top poker rooms so start playing now . Make a small or large deposit and in some cases you’ll get added bonuses and good rakebacks. So what have you got to lose? Get started right now!

Click here if you want to go back home!