Texas Hold'em Rules: A Step-by-Step Guide

This is what actually happens in a hand of Texas Hold'em, in order, including the procedural rules that catch people out the first time they play live.

The table

Play runs clockwise. A dealer button marks the nominal dealer and moves one seat to the left after each hand, so every player takes every position in turn. In a casino a house dealer handles the cards, but the button still moves — it is what determines who acts when.

Two players post forced bets before any cards are dealt:

• The small blind, immediately left of the button
• The big blind, immediately left of the small blind, usually double the small blind

The blinds exist so there is always something worth playing for. Without them, correct strategy would be to fold every hand until you were dealt aces.

Stakes are named after the blinds: a $1/$2 game has a $1 small blind and a $2 big blind. Bet sizes are usually discussed in big blinds so that strategy transfers between stakes.

Buy-ins, antes and dead blinds

Three procedural rules govern the money before any cards appear.

Buy-ins. Cash games set a minimum and maximum amount you may sit down with, typically 20 to 100 big blinds at the low end and 100 to 250 at the high. Most games are played at the maximum, because being the shortest stack at the table removes your ability to win a large pot.

Antes. Some games, and most tournaments past the early levels, add a small forced bet from every player or a single larger one from the big blind. Antes make the pot worth fighting for before anyone has acted, which is why tournament play gets substantially more aggressive once they begin.

Joining mid-game. If you sit down between the button and the blinds, you either wait for the big blind to reach you or post a dead blind to be dealt in immediately. Posting is a small, real cost, and waiting one orbit is usually the better choice.

Missing your blind because you stood up works the same way: you must post it when you return, and you cannot simply move around the table avoiding it.

Preflop

Each player receives two private cards, dealt one at a time, face down. These are your hole cards.

Action starts with the player to the left of the big blind — a seat called under the gun, because the blinds have already committed money and this player is the first to make a free decision.

Each player in turn can:

• Fold — discard and take no further part
• Call — match the big blind
• Raise — increase the bet, at least doubling the current one

Betting continues around the table until everyone has either folded or put in the same amount. The blinds act last, and they have already paid, so the big blind can simply check if nobody raised.

Which hands are worth playing here depends heavily on your seat, and this is where most money is won and lost. The charts for which hands to play from each position cover all 169 starting hands for every seat, and the starting hand chart by position explains the reasoning behind each seat's range.

Raise sizes preflop

There is no rule about how much to raise, but there are strong conventions. A standard opening raise is two and a half to three big blinds, plus roughly one extra big blind for every player who has already called. Raising after someone else has raised — a three-bet — is typically three times their raise in position and four times out of position.

The one thing the rules do enforce is the minimum: a raise must increase the bet by at least the size of the previous bet or raise, which preflop means at least doubling the big blind.

The flop

Three community cards are dealt face up in the middle. Everyone shares them.

Before dealing, the dealer burns one card face down. The practice predates modern cards and survives as protection against a marked or damaged top card.

Action now begins with the first active player to the left of the button — not the left of the big blind. This is the change that makes position matter: from here to the end of the hand, the button acts last on every street.

Options are now:

• Check — pass the action, keeping your cards, if nobody has bet
• Bet — put chips in
• Call, raise, or fold if someone has bet

If everyone checks, the round ends with no money added.

The turn

A fourth community card, after another burn. Another full round of betting, starting again to the left of the button.

The turn is where pots get large. Bets here are typically sized against a pot that already contains preflop and flop action, so a single turn bet often commits more than the two previous rounds combined.

The river

The fifth and final community card, after a third burn, followed by the last round of betting.

Nothing improves after the river. Every draw has either arrived or missed, which makes river decisions purely about whether your made hand beats the hands your opponent would bet or call with.

Showdown

If two or more players remain after the final betting round, cards are turned face up and the best five-card hand wins.

Your hand is the best five cards available from your two hole cards plus the five community cards. You may use both hole cards, one, or neither. If the board is A-K-Q-J-10 all of one suit, everyone still in the hand plays the board and the pot is split.

Who shows first: the last player to bet or raise on the river. If nobody bet, the first active player left of the button shows first. Anyone who cannot win may muck — fold face down without revealing.

Comparing hands uses the full poker hand rankings chart, and two rules decide most close ones:

• Suits are irrelevant. They never break a tie.
• Only five cards play. On a board of A-A-A-A-K, every remaining player has quad aces with a king kicker and the pot is split, no matter what they hold.

Betting rules that catch people out

Minimum raise. A raise must be at least the size of the previous bet or raise. If the bet is 10, the minimum raise is to 20. If someone then raises to 35 — an increment of 15 — the next raise must be to at least 50.

All-in for less. A player can always go all-in for less than a full raise. Doing so does not reopen the betting for players who have already acted, unless the amount was at least a full raise.

Side pots. When a short stack goes all-in, they can only win the portion of the pot they matched. Further betting between the remaining players goes into a separate side pot which the all-in player cannot win. This is handled automatically online; live, the dealer builds it.

String bets. Reaching for chips more than once without declaring an amount is not allowed. It would let you watch for a reaction mid-bet. Announce the amount, or move all the chips in a single motion.

Verbal declarations are binding. Saying "raise" commits you to raising, even if you meant to call. In a casino your words rule your chips.

Acting out of turn. Even folding early gives information to players still to act. Live dealers will warn you; the penalty is usually being held to the action.

Cards speak. At showdown the physical cards determine the winner regardless of what anyone announces. If you misread your hand and say you lost, but your cards are best, you still win.

Misdeals and irregularities

Things go wrong at live tables more often than people expect, and the rules for handling it are standardised.

Exposed cards. If the dealer exposes a hole card while dealing, it is usually a misdeal and the hand is redealt. If a player exposes their own card, the hand stands — that is their problem, not the table's.

A card off the table. A card that leaves the table surface is dead. If it is a community card, it is replaced from the deck after a burn.

Boxed cards. A card found face up in the middle of the deck is treated as though it were never there and is set aside.

Acting on an incomplete board. If the dealer produces the turn before the flop's betting round has finished, the premature card is removed, the betting is completed, and the deck is reshuffled before the correct card is dealt.

Angle-shooting. Deliberately ambiguous actions — a chip motion that could be a call or a raise, a question designed to provoke a reaction from a player still to act — are not covered by a specific rule so much as by the floor's judgement. Live rooms are strict about it, and being clear and consistent with your actions is the simplest way to stay out of a dispute.

When something contested happens, any player may call the floor. The floor's decision is final, and asking for one is entirely normal — it is not an accusation.

Live poker and online poker

The rules are the same. The mechanics differ enough to matter the first time you switch.

Live. Roughly 25 to 30 hands per hour at one table. You handle your own chips and cards, so string bets, verbal declarations and acting out of turn are real concerns. You can see your opponents, and the game is considerably more social and slower. Buy-ins are usually deeper relative to the blinds, and the play is generally looser and more passive.

Online. Around 60 to 100 hands per hour per table, and most players run several tables at once. The software enforces every rule — you cannot string bet, act out of turn or misread your hand at showdown, because the interface will not let you. There are no physical tells, and hand histories are saved, which makes review possible in a way live poker never allows.

The single biggest practical difference is volume. An online player can see more hands in a week than a live player sees in a year, which is why online strategy has advanced so much faster.

No-limit, pot-limit and fixed-limit

Almost all Hold'em played today is no-limit: you may bet any amount from the minimum up to your entire stack, at any time.

Pot-limit caps each bet at the current pot size. Common in Omaha, rare in Hold'em.

Fixed-limit allows only preset bet sizes, typically with a cap of four raises per round. It was the standard for decades and is now mostly a specialist format.

The rules above are identical across all three. Only the sizing changes — and it changes the strategy completely, because no-limit lets a single decision put your whole stack at risk.

Table stakes

You can only wager the chips in front of you at the start of the hand. You cannot reach into your pocket mid-hand, and you cannot be forced to risk more than you have on the table — that is what the side-pot rule protects.

You may add chips between hands, up to the table maximum. You may not remove chips from the table while sitting in the game; leaving with them means leaving the game.

Formats: cash games, tournaments and sit-and-gos

The rules of a hand never change. What changes is what the chips mean and how the game ends.

Cash games. Chips represent money directly. Blinds stay fixed, you may leave at any time, and you may rebuy or top up between hands. A hand costs you exactly the chips involved and nothing more.

Tournaments. Everyone pays the same entry fee for the same starting stack. Blinds rise on a timer, players are eliminated when they run out of chips, and only the top finishers are paid — usually the top 10 to 15% of the field. Tournament chips cannot be cashed out, so their value depends entirely on how much they improve your chance of a paid finish.

Sit-and-gos. Single-table tournaments that begin as soon as enough players register. Same rules as a tournament, over a much shorter timescale.

Two rules-level differences follow from the format. Tournaments add antes at later levels — a forced contribution from every player, or a single larger one posted by the big blind — which inflates the pot before the cards are dealt and makes stealing the blinds far more valuable. And tournaments handle an eliminated player by removing them entirely; there is no rebuying once the late registration period has closed, and the button skips seats that no longer exist rather than being posted twice.

Etiquette

Not rules, but close enough that ignoring them will get you corrected at a live table.

• Act in turn, and do not reach for chips before it is your action.
• Keep your cards visible and on the table, protected with a chip or your hand.
• Do not discuss a live hand, even if you have folded. Speculating about what someone holds while the hand is still running affects the players still in it.
• Do not slow-roll. Turning over the winning hand slowly at showdown, after your opponent has shown, is the one breach of etiquette the whole table will remember.
• Keep your highest-value chips visible so opponents can see roughly what you have. Hiding your stack behind smaller denominations is against the rules in most rooms.

Putting the rules to work

The rules are the easy part. The reason this page exists is that everything else — position, betting, hand reading — is built on knowing precisely who acts when and what each action means.

The two things worth learning next, in order: which hands to play before the flop, and how to work out whether a call is profitable. You can calculate your equity in any spot against a specific hand or a whole range, which turns "I think I'm probably ahead" into a number.

For the wider picture, our complete beginner's guide to poker covers strategy, bankroll and the mental side alongside the rules.

One closing note on why the procedural detail above is worth the effort. Nearly every rule on this page exists because someone once exploited its absence: burn cards protect against marked decks, string bet rules protect against fishing for reactions, table stakes protect a short stack from being bet off a hand by money that is not on the table. Reading them as a list of prohibitions makes them tedious. Reading them as a record of the ways people have tried to cheat at poker makes them memorable, and considerably easier to apply when something unusual happens at your table.