Texas Holdem

Texas Holdem has become the most popular card game in casinos and online all over the world. Texas Holdem uses a combination of the player’s own two cards plus the five community cards on the table.

Texas Holdem became popular due to the exposure on TV, it became so popular that it replaced 7 card stud as the most popular game in casinos world wide.

Do to the analysis that could be involved when playing texas hold’em, many books have been published giving techniques and strategic advice on how to play certain hands and how to read opponents at the tables. There are also many training websites offering, videos and personalized coaching to improve at the poker tables.

Texas Holdem is played like all other poker games, players contribute money to the pot and the hand is taken down by the best combination of personal cards with the community cards. There are ties so the players with the highest hands at the table will be the winners. There’s so much strategy that can be applied to Texas Hold’em that poker pro’s make a living by playing poker, they are so good at reading people that they can maximize their earnings and end up with a positive bankroll.

Texas Hold’em started in Texas USA and it was introduced into Las Vegas in 1967, it was only offered in the Golden Nugget Casino for around two years and then the Dunes Casino started to offer the game, poker pros started realized that it was easy to make money on Texas Holdem with so many new inexperienced players at the time.

Many factors have to be taken in consideration to understand how Texas Hold’em became so popular in the 21st century. First Hollywood released a film that had poker as the plot for a movie (Rounders). Then In 1999 poker was televised and as a new feature they had cameras positioned to view the player’s personal cards, this added the extra ingredient that captured the world’s attention and from that point on the popularity grew to the point were Poker can be seen on almost all mayor sport TV networks. Increased success was noticeable when Texas Holdem became available online; the first online poker room was called Planet Poker which doesn’t offer games for real money since 2006. Now PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker are the mayor online poker rooms that allow USA players.

Texas Hold’em Rules

  • The standard deck with 52 playing cards is used like in all poker variations.
  • In online Texas Hold’em the dealer is indicated by a dealer button that rotates clockwise after every hand is played.
  • The player next to the dealer button is called the small blind and the player next to him is called the big blind those two players have to post the default bet depending on which limit they are playing, for example: $1/$2 means that the small blind will have to post $1 and the big blind $2 before the cards are dealt. After that each player is dealt 2 cards upsidedown.
  • The first round of betting happens before the flop and after the small blind and big blind are posted, then the other players at the table decide to pay the big blind, raise or fold, once all the bets are the same the first 3 community cards are dealt (the flop).
  • The second round of betting takes place and once all the wagers are the same the 4th (called the turn) community card is dealt, then the 3rd round of betting takes place and once again after all wagers are the same the 5th (called the river) community card is dealt and the final betting round takes place. After all wagers are the same the players flop their personal cards and the best combination of personal plus community cards wins the hand. A player can fold its cards at any point in the hand so nobody is obligated to bet at any point during the hand.

    • Texas Hold’em in Tournaments

    Texas Hold’em is very popular in live and online tourneys, players that buy into the tournament and are given a certain number of chips. In most cases only the first nine places in the tournament make money, but it all depends on how the tournament payment structure is set up. The proper strategy suggested by many books is to play tight but when the blinds levels are raised fairly quick players that only take action with premium hands run out of chips if they did not have luck with the hands they played before at lower levels.