One Hand of Texas Hold'em

With the intense atmosphere surrounding a poker table it can, at first, be a complicated and intimidating scene.

A fourth card is placed beside the three cards already on the table: One player taps his fingers lightly on the table, another pushes some differently colored chips in front of him, then all the other players simply throw their hands away and the person who just pushed a few chips in front of him gets the whole pile of chips lying in the middle of the table.

What happened? Well, it is hard to tell why each player chose to do what they did. But it is easy to learn what they did (you will in a minute if you continue to read this poker school now). The technical side of the game is pretty basic.

So poker is not complicated. Said in the context that poker in general and Texas Hold’em in particular "Takes a minute to learn, and lifetime to master".

Neither is poker a scary, intimidating game. Poker is played in card rooms by poker players and poker players are people like everybody else. They are: kind, tall, small, grumpy, happy or funny. But one thing separates the poker players from non-poker players: they all relish the fact that you have taken an interest in their hobby. They have all been new to the game at one time and they do not only understand your interest in the game but they have also dealt with the same questions and uncertainties as you have now. And the card rooms they have become really good at straightening out question marks and uncertainties with all the experience they have gathered from the recent poker boom.

That is another thing that makes poker easy to pick up today, poker rooms on the Internet. The interface that greets you is fool proof. In an online poker room your possible actions at each turn of event will be clearly stated to you and all you have to do is click on the action you wish to take. You do not risk the embarrassment of acting out of turn or putting the wrong amount of chips into the pot. This also means that no one can see you trembling with excitement as you with shaking hands push the button to raise a pot where you know you have the best hand.

There are a number of different poker variants. Texas Hold’em is the biggest. It is the one you have seen on TV. It is the one the world champion is crowned in and it is the one all card room offers. At the same time it is an excellent game for beginners, as it is simple to learn but will always leave you wanting to learn the finer points.

Click through the following pages for a quick step-by-step overview of how Texas Hold'em works. It breaks down a single hand of Texas Hold'em in 10 steps.