Texas Hold Em Cards
Texas Holdem is a skill based card game played by people from all over the world in casinos and online. It is particularly popular in America which is also the birthplace of the game. Many people dream of winning the World Series of Poker Main Event which crowns the unofficial best No Limit Texas Hold'em player every year. Texas Hold'em is a 5 card poker game where players make wagers on the confidence in their hand's chances of winning. This type of poker uses 5 community cards that all players can use and 2 hole cards that are face down. Like any poker game the styles and strategies of play can get very complex and take years of dedicated play to learn. Holding 2 and 7 off suit is considered to be the worst hand in Texas Hold'em. 2 and 7 are the lowest two cards you can have that can’t make a straight. Even if 2 and 7 are suited, those cards will make you a very low flush. And if either of 2 or 7 make pairs, it’s still a low hand. Texas Hold’em – Each player is dealt two hole cards and then there is a “pre-flop” betting round following a defined order of play. Three community cards, called the “flop, are then dealt and there is a 2nd betting round. Texas Hold’em Odds: Hole Cards To give you a greater understanding of how difficult it can be to predict an opponent’s hand, as well as giving you a better insight into how to count cards effectively, it’s important to know the odds of receiving some of the best and worst hole cards.
It’s not uncommon for people to hear of cheating when they hear the term “card counting”, but the technique doesn’t actually have anything to do with cheating at all. What’s more is that you don’t need to be a math wiz to be able to learn how to do it.
Nevertheless, it’s not uncommon for people to want to learn how counting cards works, and in poker specifically, it can be an effective strategy that can give you the edge over your opponents. When you first start learning how to count cards, you only need to get a hang of three simple things, namely Texas Hold’em odds, counting your outs and pot equity. This guide will show you the basics of counting cards so that you can improve your Texas Hold’em game:
How to Count Cards: Counting Outs
Any good poker player needs to be able to count outs. Learning how to count outs will help you improve your game and give you excellent preliminary knowledge before you truly understand how to count cards in poker. So, what is an “out”? The term “out” in the context of poker refers to any card that will make your hand stronger or give you the potential of turning your hand into a winning one. To be able to identify cards that will do this to a hand, you need to have good knowledge of hand rankings. Thankfully, calculating outs is relatively simple:
Remember that counting cards is not an exact science. Unlike the example above, you will never know which cards your opponent is holding. As a result, you need to pay attention to how they play, when they produce their flop cards, how much they are betting while also considering the possible available combinations. Don’t forget that they could always be bluffing!
Counting Cards: Poker Pot Equity
You will be able to grasp pot equity when you get the hang of counting cards. It’s a natural extension of card counting and involves calculating the likelihood of your chances of forming a winning hand and thus taking the pot.
There’s a method for calculating pot equity, and it’s known as the “Rule of Two and Four”. It is only applied during the flop and river stages of a round, and that’s because they are the only two stages where more cards are revealed. Here the two simple rules within the Rule of Two and Four:
For example, if you had a draw with 12 possible outs on the flop, you would multiply this by four, giving you approximately a 48% chance of getting the right cards to complete your hand. Furthermore, if you are left with 12 outs on the turn, you would have a 24% chance of completing your hand. Calculating your pot equity can be extremely useful when it comes to determining your moves in a game, reducing the number of needless bets you have to make, and proving the importance of learning how to count cards in poker.
The underlying mathematics of this process is complex, but worth knowing if you want to calculate your equity on the fly. Say you have 10 outs on the turn with 46 cards left in the deck, your probability of hitting is 10/46. By imagining that there are 50 cards in the deck, the probability is 10/50, or 20/100, meaning that your chance of getting the pot equity is 20%.
However, the real probability of 10/46 is expressed as 21.7%, which would mean that the number of outs would have to be multiplied by 2.174 – an incredibly hard sum to do when your opponent just raised €50! Regardless of how you choose to use it, if you want to learn how to count cards, you need to know how to judge your pot equity.
Texas Hold’em Odds: Hole Cards
To give you a greater understanding of how difficult it can be to predict an opponent’s hand, as well as giving you a better insight into how to count cards effectively, it’s important to know the odds of receiving some of the best and worst hole cards. In addition, we’ll give you the probability of winning with these hands in a standard four-person game.
Now that you’ve learned the ins and outs of how to count cards, pot equity, and Texas Holdem odds, why not put your skills to the test of one of our online poker games?
- Pineapple - Crazy Pineapple - Crazy Pineapple Hi-Lo
Introduction
Texas Hold'em is a shared card poker game. Each player is dealt two private cards and there are five face up shared (or 'community') cards on the table that can be used by anyone. In the showdown the winner is the player who can make the best five-card poker hand from the seven cards available.
Since the 1990's, Texas Hold'em has become one of the most popular poker games worldwide. Its spread has been helped firstly by a number of well publicised televised tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and secondly by its success as an online game. For many people nowadays, poker has become synonymous with Texas Hold'em.
This page assumes some familiarity with the general rules and terminology of poker. See the poker rules page for an introduction to these, and the poker betting and poker hand ranking pages for further details.
Players and Cards
From two to ten players can take part. In theory more could play, but the game would become unwieldy.
A standard international 52-card pack is used.
The Deal and Betting
Texas Hold'em is usually played with no ante, but with blinds. When there are more than two players, the player to dealer's left places a small blind, and the next player to the left a big blind. The big blind is equal to the minimum bet and the small blind is typically half that amount. When there are only two players (a 'heads-up' game), the dealer places the small blind and the non-dealer the big blind.
The cards are shuffled and cut, the dealer 'burns' one card and then deals the cards one at a time face down until each player has two cards. These are known as the player's hole cards or pocket cards. Players may look at their two hole cards and must not show them to any other player.
The first betting round is begun by the player to the left of the big blind. The blinds count as bets, so the small blind need only pay the difference between the blinds to call. The big blind player acts last and is allowed to raise, even if the other active players have all called.
After the first betting round the dealer burns one card and deals three cards face up to the table. These three cards are known as the flop. There is then a second betting round begun by the first active player to the left of the dealer seat.
When the second betting round is complete, the dealer burns a card and then deals one card face up to the table. This card is known as the turn or fourth street. There is then a third betting round, again begun by the first active player to the left of the dealer seat.
After the third betting round the dealer burns another card and deals one more card face up - the river or fifth street. There is fourth and final round of betting before the showdown, again begun by the first active player to the left of the dealer seat.
In a fixed-limit or spread-limit game, any betting round that has more than two active players at the start is normally limited to one bet plus three (sometimes four) raises. In the first (pre-flop) betting round the big blind counts for this purpose as the first bet. If a betting round begins with only two active players, there is no limit on the number of raises.
In limit poker, the betting limits are usually doubled before the third betting round. So for example a $10-$20 game would typically have blinds of $5 and $10, bets of $10 in the first two rounds and bets of $20 in the last two.
The Showdown
Active players show their hands in clockwise order, beginning with the player who was the last to bet or raise in the final betting round. If everyone checked in the final betting round, the first active player to the left of the dealer seat is the first to show. See the betting and showdown page for further details.
Each player makes the best possible five-card poker hand from the seven available cards: the player's two hole cards and the five face-up table cards, which are known as the board. This can be in any combination: both hole cards with three from the board, one hole card with four from the board, or just the board cards without using the hole cards at all, which is known as playing the board.
Note that:
- For a hand to be considered for winning the pot, the player must show both hole cards, even if only one or neither of them is used to make the best hand.
- The cards speak for themselves: the best hand is entitled to win the pot if shown, even if the owner does not realise that it is the best hand.
- As always, poker hands consist of just five cards. The two unused cards have no bearing on whether one hand is better than another.
Example. On the board is A-Q-Q-9-6. Player A has K-9; player B has 9-6; player C has 9-3. This is a three-way tie, since all three players have Q-Q-9-9-A as their best hand. The pot is split equally between A, B and C.
Strategy
Because of its great popularity as a tournament and online game, much has been written about the strategy of Texas Hold'em.
The Poker Strategy page provides a list of sites with useful Texas Hold'em Strategy articles.
The Poker Books page reviews a couple of good books about how to play Texas Hold'em.
Variations
The game described above is Texas Hold'em as played formally in public card rooms. When it is played at home, the same procedure can be used, but in some informal games the burning of cards is omitted, and the five community cards are dealt face down to the table at the start. Three of these cards are turned face up after the first betting round, one after the second and one after the third. The result is similar to the formal game, but there is an increased risk that a player might, by accident or by cheating, learn the identity of some of the table cards before they are officially exposed.
The practice of dealing the community cards to the table at the start and turning them face up later is commonly found in community card poker games with more complex layouts, such as Iron Cross and Tic-Tac-Toe. Several of these are listed on the Poker Variants page.
Pineapple
Texas Holdem Cards To Bet On
This is played the same way as Texas Hold'em, except that each player is initially dealt three hole cards and must discard one of them before the first round of betting.
Crazy Pineapple
As in Pineapple, each player is dealt three cards, but in Crazy Pineapple they are kept until after the second betting round. Each active player must discard one card immediately before the fourth board card (the turn) is dealt.
Crazy Pineapple Hi-Lo 8 or Better
Texas Hold Em Card Ranks
Crazy Pineapple is often played in such a way that the pot is shared between the players with the highest and lowest hands. The deal and betting are exactly as in Crazy Pineapple. At the showdown, as well as making their best hand, each active player makes the lowest possible hand from their seven cards. When making a low hand, the five cards must all be of different ranks, the aces count as low, straights and flushes do not count, and no card can be higher than an 8. So the best low hand is A-2-3-4-5 and the worst is 8-7-6-5-4. Cards are compared from the top down, so 7-5-4-3-2 is better than 7-6-3-2-A because the 5 is lower than the 6. Players can use a different selection of cards for their high hand and their low hand.
Texas Hold Em Cards Per Player
The pot is split equally between the highest hand and the lowest hand. If none of the active players qualifies for low (which will automatically be the case if there are three cards higher than 8 on the board), then the player with the highest hand wins the whole pot.
Irish
/improve-at-texas-hold-em-poker-412242_final-5bb26d0346e0fb0026dfc3f1.png "Fold")
This Texas Hold'em variant is similar to Crazy Pineapple, but each player is initially dealt four hole cards. These can all be kept until the end of the second round of betting. Before the fourth board card (the turn) is dealt, each active player must discard two of their hole cards, keeping just two for the turn and river.