Texas Hold'em For Dummies

Part I

Everything’s Bigger in Texas: Welcome to Texas Hold’em!

In this part . . .

Think of it as Texas Hold’em 101. I walk through the rankings of poker hands, the mechanics of Hold’em, proper poker manners, and bankroll basics. Your introductions to everything from flopping to dropping are all here.

Chapter 1

A Bird’s-Eye View of Texas Hold’em

In This Chapter

bullet Setting your poker goal

bullet Scoping out the game

bullet Getting more hard core

bullet Finding a place to play

Twenty years ago, Texas Hold’em lived in relative poker obscurity. When I was playing in casinos, it was fairly common for people to come up and ask me about the game.

A few years ago, the perfect Hold’em storm was created: Chris Moneymaker won the $10,000 Main Event of the World Series (pocketing more than $2 million off of a $40 entry fee), the World Poker Tour became the most successful program in the history of the Travel Channel, and online play became prevalent.

The poker craze has gotten so out of hand that my mom is now telling me about watching poker on TV: It’s a lot like quilting. You really have to pay attention to catch the nuances. Not exactly the way I look at the game, but the fact that she’s even watching says something.

In this chapter, I give you an overview of everything else you can expect from the book. Read on and then venture forth where you will.

Oh yes, and good luck to you! Let’s shuffle up and deal.

Considering Why You Want to Play

Before you even cozy up to a card table, you should ask yourself a critical question: Why am I here?

There are several possible answers to this question:

bullet I want to make money.

bullet I’m just out to chill with my pals and have a good time.

bullet I want to sharpen my game.

bullet Hold’em has just crossed into my mental radar and I want to find out more about it.

bullet Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Your reason may even be a combination of these things. Whatever your reason for being at the table, setting a main goal for your play and trying to reach it is critically important.

What I’m about to say will sound like I’m joking, but I assure you I’m not: You do not have to set a goal of making money at the table. The media pressure, and general public attention on Hold’em, has set up an expectation that you can, must, and should, win.

The sad fact is that roughly 95 percent of the people who play poker in professional establishments lose money. It’s a devilishly hard game to beat because of the rake (a small percentage of the pot that the house takes to run the game — see Chapter 3 for more), and because the vagaries of chance even out over time, you have to truly maximize your wins and minimize your losses, or you’ll watch your wallet slowly shrink.

It you decide from the outset that you have a goal other than winning, you won’t beat yourself up when you don’t. And believe me, no one at your table will argue with you if you don’t mind losing.

Don’t get me wrong, one of my requirements of sitting at a table is that I play to win — when I don’t, it sets me in a foul mood for hours if not days. Because you’re playing against other mortals — people full of pride and fallibility — you can beat the game. My friends and I have proven it over a mathematically significant period of time.

But winning takes perseverance, attention, and thought. Your reading this book is a great start. Keep going. Your will is already stronger than the average Friday-night player — now’s the time to get your ability up there as well.

Working with Game Dynamics

In order to begin appreciating the complexities of Hold’em, you need to understand two basic elements of the game: your position at the table, and the particular way the game is dealt.

The importance of position

When Hold’em is played in a professional card room (be it online or in a brick-and-mortar casino), a dealer button acts as the theoretical point that the cards are being dealt from. This button moves one position clockwise around the table at the conclusion of every hand.

The player in the position immediately to the left of the dealer (that is to say, clockwise) posts an automatic bet called the small blind, and the player immediately to his left (or two places to the left of the dealer) posts an automatic bet known as the big blind. These are forced bets that players must make in order to get dealt into the game. All other players get to see their hands for free. (To get a better understanding of the dealer button and blinds, flip to Chapter 3.)

Players decide whether to play or fold (quit) in a clockwise position, starting with the player immediately to the left (clockwise) of the big blind.

In Hold’em, your position relative to the other players is critical. When you’re in the beginning of the betting order, your cards have to be of higher quality than the cards you would normally play in later position — especially if lots of players are left in the hand — because you have no idea what evil may lurk beyond. (For more detail on playing by position, see Chapter 4.)

Likewise, if you’re riding at the back of the calling order, you can afford to play looser hands (those that aren’t as high quality) and hope to catch cards to break people’s dreams. In fact, pot odds (the amount you bet relative to the amount you would win) say that sometimes you should call, even when you have a lesser hand. (Chapter 12 gives you more detail on pot odds and all things mathematical.)

Playing move by move

Like all poker games, Hold’em has a very specific order in which the cards are dealt and played. (Chapter 2 has diagrams of Hold’em hands being dealt if you want to see what they look like in action on a table.)

Hole cards

At the start of a Hold’em hand, after the two blinds have been posted, all players are dealt two cards facedown. These are known as the hole or pocket cards. Players then make a decision to call the blinds (match the big blind), raise the blinds (increase the bet) or fold (quit playing and throw their cards away, facedown, to the middle of the table — known as mucking).

In the form of Hold’em known as Limit, the bets have to be of a certain specified amount. In No-Limit, players may bet any amount of their chips on the table. (You can find more on the different types of betting limits and how they work in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 (and on the Cheat Sheet), you can find more on the types of hands you should play as hole cards, according to your position, as well as information on how to bet them.

If you’ve just been invited to a poker party and don’t have the time to even read Chapter 4, here’s a general rule I tell newbies that works remarkably well:

If both of your hole cards are not 10s or greater (Jacks, Queens, Kings, or Aces), fold.

Yes, it sounds harsh, but it’ll keep you pretty much only playing the cards that you should — and about the right frequency of hands.

Make sure not to show your hole cards to other players at the table (even if those other players are no longer in the hand). And after you’ve looked at your cards, you should protect them from being collected by the dealer by placing an extra poker chip (or some other small object) on top of them.

The flop

After the betting action is done on the round with the hole cards (also known as pre-flop), three cards are displayed by the dealer simultaneously to the center of the poker table — this is known as the flop. At this point, each player at the table has a unique five-card poker hand consisting of his two hole cards and the three community cards.

Because of the raw number of cards involved, the flop typically gives you the general tenor of the poker hand and definitely gives you a good idea of the kind of hand to look for as a winner. For example, an all-Spade flop (especially with a lot of players still in the hand) will be hinting at a flush as a strong possibility for a winner.

Betting begins with the first person still in the hand to the left (clockwise) of the dealer button. As a general rule, you want your hand to match the flop, and you should fold if it doesn’t. (Chapter 5 is all about how to play the flop.)

In Limit play, the size of the bet you can make on the flop is identical to the amount you can make pre-flop.

The turn

After the flop betting round is completed, another community card is placed, known as the turn (or sometimes fourth street). Each of the remaining players now has a six-card poker hand made up of his two private hole cards and the four community cards. Hold’em is a game where only five cards count toward a poker hand, so everyone has a theoretical extra card at this point.

In Limit, the betting is now twice the amount that was bet pre- and post-flop.

Poker wags like to say, The turn plays itself, meaning your hand gets better and you bet it, or it doesn’t and you start giving strong thoughts to folding. This is more or less true. (You can find more details about playing the turn in Chapter 6.)

The river

After the betting round of the turn, a final community card is exposed, known as the river (sometimes called fifth street).

Each player left in the game has his final hand consisting of the best five cards of the seven available (two private hole cards and the five community cards). Players may use two hole cards along with three community cards, one hole card combined with four community cards, or just the five community cards (known as playing the board). Again, poker hands are made up of the best five cards — the other two available to any given player don’t count. There is one final round of betting. (Chapter 7 washes you with the river details.)

The showdown

The showdown is what happens after the final river bets have been placed. Although it isn’t formally required, typically the person who initiated the final round of betting is first to show her hand. The action then proceeds in a clockwise fashion with players either mucking their hands if they can’t beat the hand exposed, or showing a better hand (at which point the dealer mucks the old, worse hand and continues around the table for any remaining hands).

Winners and losers are determined by the standard poker hand rankings. (Chapter 2 gives more details on those if you’re not already familiar with them.)

If you’re ever unclear about who is winning a hand, just turn your cards face up and let the dealer decide. Never take a player’s word on what she has in hand until you’ve actually seen her cards with your own eyes — when you muck a hand, it’s officially dead.

Moving Up a Notch

After you have the basics of how the game is played, it’s time to move into the deeper levels of the game.

Gleaning your opponents

By far, the most important thing in a poker game is figuring out, and then playing specifically to, your opponents. When you’ve been bet into, what might be a raise against one player can be an easy and fast fold against another.

You need to factor in such questions as:

bullet How likely is your opponent to bluff?

bullet Does your opponent sense weakness in your betting action or in the way you’re behaving at the table?

bullet Is your opponent’s table position influencing the way he plays?

bullet Do the board cards hint at a good hand (or possibly a hand that has been missed, and is your opponent now bluffing)?

If you read no other chapter of this book, look over Chapter 8 for much more detail on playing the players at the table.

Playing the roles

When it’s your turn to bet, you really only have some subset of five choices:

bullet Check: If no one else has bet yet

bullet Bet: If no one else has bet

bullet Call: If a player in front of you has bet and you want to match the amount to stay in the game

bullet Raise: If a player in front of you has bet, but you want to increase the amount

bullet Fold: If you’ve decided you can’t take it any more

With such limited choices, some people may think there isn’t a whole lot to the game — but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Bluffing

One of the things poker is best known for is bluffing (acting as though you have a hand that you don’t actually have, in an effort to get your opponent to fold). Bluffing is the point where your the psychological rubber hits the steely money road — and it’s the glorious difference that separates poker from nearly any other game you can mention.

Bluffing works best when:

bullet You’re playing against a weaker opponent (who is likely to fold).

bullet There is a large amount of money at stake, where winning the hand would make a difference to your stack.

bullet People have reason to believe you aren’t bluffing.

bullet The community cards hint at a hand you could have (for example, a straight or a flush) but that you actually don’t.

Bluffing is a bad idea when:

bullet You try to get a player to fold who is very prone to calling, just to see what you have.

bullet There is no other obvious reason for you to bluff.

bullet You’re playing with people who think, Sure, I’ll call — that guy always bluffs.

bullet You gain nothing (or nearly nothing) by doing so.

For more on bluffing, see Chapter 9.

Slow playing

Slow playing is the expression used to describe a player who has an extremely good hand, but doesn’t bet it strong from the start, all in an effort to squeeze more money out of his opponent.

The good news is, if you slow-play it can help camouflage your hand, leaving the unsuspecting at your disposal. The bad news is it can backfire and give your opponent a chance to draw cards that can ultimately beat you.

Chapter 10 is your slow-playing headquarters. In the name of indirection, it’s best to act like you’re actually going somewhere else as you mosey on over to Chapter 10 and take a look.

Figuring in math

If playing your opponents is the most important thing to know at a poker table, the next most important is mathematics.

The math behind poker isn’t complicated — much of it you can already do off the top of your head, assuming you know little things like the fact that a deck has 52 cards: 4 suits, each with 13 ranked cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace). What you can’t (or don’t want to) figure out you can memorize.

The two important things to pay attention to are the chances of making your hand on a draw (for example, you have four Clubs between your hand and the community cards through the turn — what’re the chances of seeing one on the river?), and what are the pot odds if you do (that is, how much do you win relative to how much you bet?).

I cover mathematics in detail in Chapter 12 — and I promise it’s not the yawner that it was in school.

Places You Can Play

Playing poker is easy, assuming you can find a game. Of course, thanks to the current poker craze, you can find a game nearly anywhere.

Home games

For poker, there’s truly no place like home. For one thing, there’s no rake. For another, you can slap on your Judas Priest album and bang your head — and your tablemates can just join in.

The upsides:

bullet You get to play with your pals. (This is an upside only if you actually like your pals.)

bullet You get to play as naked as you’d like.

bullet You call the shots on everything.

The downsides:

bullet Your dog might eat the food you spread out on the counter.

bullet The equipment isn’t as nice as a professional card room.

bullet Your place tends to get a little bit trashed.

For more on home games, take a look at Chapter 14. Chapter 20 has some ideas on making your home games better.

Casinos and poker rooms

As far as a place to play goes, you can’t beat the equipment, comfort, and cocktail waitresses of a professional card room. A professional dealer lets you focus all your attention on the game (and not having to fumble with the cards yourself), and gaming commission rules ensure that you’re getting a fair deal.

When you go to a professional card room, you should check in with the board person (the person responsible for the waiting lists) to find out the limits and games that are being spread. The floorperson will seat you and help you get your chips.

Chapter 16 has the rundown on professional card rooms, and hey, don’t forget to tip your dealer!

Online

The biggest poker room in the world is no farther away than your computer. All you need to do is transfer money from your bank account to a third-party transfer agent, and then from there to the poker site of your choice. (This is a process similar to using PayPal for buying stuff off of eBay.)

As soon as you have money in your account, you can be off and playing. The good news is, the rakes tend to be less and there are more bonuses than at brick-and-mortar card rooms. The bad news is, the physical absence of a player at your table makes reading tells much harder.

See Chapter 15 for more on the online world. Chapter 18 details some differences between the online and real worlds. And hey, if you really get into playing online, you can just pick up a copy of Winning at Internet Poker For Dummies (published by Wiley), which I wrote with Chris Derossi. It dovetails almost perfectly with this book.

Chapter 2

Ranking and Reading a Hand

In This Chapter

bullet Figuring out poker hands, from the lowly to the royal

bullet Delving into the hand that’s been dealt

bullet Scoring a pot

The main thing to remember about Hold’em is that it’s still just poker. If you already know poker’s hand rankings, you’re already all over what beats what in Hold’em.

If you’ve played poker but not Hold’em, skip ahead to the Reading a Hand section of this chapter. There you get a feel for how to tell the value of a hand as well as the board.

Hand Rankings

When a Hold’em hand is fully dealt, you have ownership of seven cards — your two hole cards, along with the five community cards. Your poker hand is the best five cards of the seven. The other two cards don’t count toward the hand in any way.

Figure 2-1 illustrates the way hands are ranked. Hold’em uses exactly the same hand rankings as all other standard poker games, and — assuming you’re not playing at Crazy Larry’s — there aren’t any wild cards.

In the following sections, I walk through these hand rankings from lowest to highest. At a card table, whenever you get one of these hands for the very first time in your life, be sure to squeal with glee. It doesn’t make your hand any better, but it’s good entertainment for everyone else at an otherwise monotonous table.

Figure 2-1: Rankings of poker hands, best to worst.

High card only — no pairs

The technical name for this hand is bad. It’s any hand were you have, in a word, nothing. If the board shows 10 clubs 5 hearts 4 diamonds 3 diamonds K clubs and you hold A hearts Q hearts , your hand is A-K-Q-10-5. Rank order of the unrelated cards determines the winner (Aces are high). So this hand beats A-K-Q-10-4 (all other cards tie, and 5 beats 4) but would lose to A-K-Q-J-4 (first three cards tie, but J beats 10).

One pair

This hand is two cards of the same rank with three unrelated cards. If two players hold the same pair, then the unrelated cards are compared to determine a winner.

Two pair

In this hand, you have two cards of the same rank along with two cards of another rank and an unrelated card. If multiple players have two pair, the high single pair of all the two-pair hands wins. If players have identical high pairs, the highest ranked second pair wins (K-K-Q-Q-4 beats K-K-7-7-A). If multiple players have identical two-pair hands, the person with the highest unrelated card (the kicker) wins (3-3-2-2-K beats 3-3-2-2-9).

Three-of-a-kind

This hand is three of one rank matched with two unrelated cards. Three-of-a-kind is also called a set or trips.

Straight

Five cards, not of the same suit, ranked in sequence are considered a straight. A-K-Q-J-10 (known in poker slang as Broadway) is the highest straight. A-2-3-4-5 is the lowest (called a wheel). Straights are always called by their high card, for example 7-high-straight. The highest ranked straight wins.

The wheel is the only case in Hold’em where the Ace is low. An A-2-3-4-5 straight is only 5-high, not Ace-high.

Straights are not allowed to wrap around. Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight — it’s a hand that is Ace-King-high.

How rare is a royal flush?

Assuming all seven cards get dealt out and you get to choose the five best (which is the way a full Hold’em hand is dealt), on average you’ll see one royal flush every 30,940 hands. A royal flush on the board (meaning the five up cards in the middle of the table only) will happen only once every 649,740 hands. Better start playin’.

Flush

In this hand, you have five non-straight cards of the same suit. 2 hearts 3 hearts 5 hearts 8 hearts 10 hearts is a 10-high flush. The highest ranked flush wins.

All suits have the same value. One suit is not worth more than any other (unlike a game like bridge where spades outrank hearts).

Full house

This is three-of-a-kind matched with a pair. A full house (also called a full boat or just simply boat) is always ranked and called by the three-of-a-kind rank first, so 5-5-5-Q-Q is called, fives full of Queens.

Four-of-a-kind

As you can probably guess, this hand is four cards of one rank (also known as quads) with another loner. If two players have the same four-of-a-kind, the highest fifth card determines the hand.

Straight flush

This is five cards that are both straight and flush. Q hearts J hearts 10 hearts 9 hearts 8 hearts is a Queen-high straight flush. A straight flush wheel (a steel wheel) is the lowest straight flush.

Royal flush

A-K-Q-J-10 of the same suit is called a royal flush, but really, it’s just a fancy name for the highest possible straight flush.

Reading a Hand

If you’ve never played Hold’em, you’ll find that getting used to how to read a hand takes a while. Don’t panic, just pick the best five cards of the seven.

Straightforward hands

Some hands are pretty obvious. For example in Figure 2-2, Dean has a pair of Aces, Jerry has a pair of Kings. The pair of Aces win.

Figure 2-2: A pair of Aces beat a pair of Kings.

Figure 2-3 shows two players with a straight. David has the high end with 10-9, Tina has the bottom end with 5-4. David wins, Tina complains. A lot.