Poker rules

Contents

1. The rules of no limit Texas hold'em

Each player receives 2 private cards. 5 community cards are turned face up in the middle. You make the best 5-card hand by freely combining your private cards with the community cards. Four betting rounds separate the stages.

The table and the button

A button (dealer) marker shows the notional dealer. It moves one seat to the left after each hand. The two players to its left post forced bets before even seeing their cards:

• Small blind (SB): the first player to the left of the button, who usually posts half of the big blind.
• Big blind (BB): the next player, who posts the reference blind of the level.
• Ante (optional): a small forced bet from every player, or from a single player in the "big blind ante" format. It swells the pot and pushes players to play more hands. It is often introduced in the middle of a tournament.

How a hand plays out

1. Preflop: each player receives 2 face-down cards. The first to act is the player to the left of the big blind (the "under the gun" position). The big blind acts last and can raise even if nobody has raised.
2. Flop: 3 community cards are turned over at once. From now on, the small blind (or the first player still in the hand to the left of the button) acts first, and the button acts last.
3. Turn: a 4^th community card. New betting round.
4. River: a 5^th and final community card. Last betting round.
5. Showdown: if at least two players are still in the hand, the hands are revealed. The best 5-card combination wins the pot.

In each round, betting continues until all the players still in the hand have put in the same amount or have folded.

The possible actions

• Fold: give up the hand and everything you have already bet.
• Call: match the current bet.
• Check: pass without betting, only if nobody has bet before you.
• Bet: be the first to put chips in during the round.
• Raise: increase an existing bet.
• All-in: put in all of your chips.

Betting rules specific to no limit

• Minimum bet: equal to the big blind of the current level.
• Maximum bet: the player's entire stack, at any time.
• Minimum raise: the size of the raise must be at least equal to the previous bet or raise. If your opponent bets 500, the minimum raise is to 1,000 (500 to call + 500 to raise).
• Table stakes: you play only the chips that are on the table at the start of the hand. You can neither add chips during a hand nor take money off the table during a session.
• Side pot: if a player goes all-in for less than the current bet, they can only win the part of the pot they contributed to. The extra put in by the others forms a side pot that they cannot win.
• String bet: betting in several movements is forbidden. You announce the amount, or push the chips forward in a single motion.

Reading your hand

You use the best 5-card combination out of the 7 available. The three possible cases:

• your 2 private cards + 3 community cards;
• 1 private card + 4 community cards;
• the 5 community cards alone: you "play the board", and the pot is then split between all the players who reach the showdown.

In case of an exact tie on all 5 cards, the pot is split. The suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs) have no ranking in poker.

2. Hand rankings

From strongest to weakest.

The ace counts as a high card (A-K-Q-J-10) or as a low card in the A-2-3-4-5 straight, called "the wheel". It cannot be in the middle: Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

3. Techniques and strategy

Poker is a game of incomplete information. The aim is not to win the most hands, but to make, hand after hand, decisions with a positive expected value. Losing a pot after making the right decision is a success; winning a pot with a bad decision is a trap.

Position

This is the most profitable and most underrated concept. Acting last means deciding with information the others do not have: their earlier action.

• Early positions (UTG, UTG+1): play few hands, and strong ones.
• Middle positions (MP, hijack): widen gradually.
• Late positions (cutoff, button): the most profitable zone, where you can open wide and steal the blinds.
• Blinds: structurally losing positions, where you play defensively and out of position for the rest of the hand.

Choosing starting hands

A useful guide: at a full table, open only about 15 to 25% of hands, against 40 to 50% on the button at a short-handed table.

• Premium: AA, KK, QQ, AK. Play them aggressively from anywhere.
• Strong: JJ, TT, AQ, AJ suited, KQ suited.
• Speculative: small pairs, suited connectors (87s, 76s), suited aces. They are worth their potential to make a big hand, not their immediate strength, so they are played cheaply and with deep stacks.
• Classic traps: weak unsuited aces (A7 offsuit), two unsuited face cards out of position, and gutshot straights played for their looks.

Controlled aggression

There are two ways to win a pot: have the best hand at showdown, or make everyone fold before. Betting allows both, calling only one. Hence the basic principle of winning play: tight-aggressive (TAG), few hands played, but played hard.

• Continuation bet (c-bet): having raised preflop, then betting the flop whether or not you hit. Effective on dry boards and against few opponents.
• 3-bet / 4-bet: the raise of a raise. A value tool with premium hands, a pressure tool with hands that have potential.
• Check-raise: check to let the opponent bet, then raise. One of the most powerful plays, for value as well as for bluffing.
• Semi-bluff: betting with a draw (flush, straight). You win right away if the opponent folds, and you keep outs if they call. It is the most profitable bluff, because it has two ways to succeed.

Pot odds and outs

A numbers-based decision: is calling profitable?

• Pot odds: if the pot is 100 and you must call 25, you risk 25 to win 125, a 20% share. You therefore need at least a 20% chance of winning the pot.
• Outs: the number of cards that improve your hand. A flush draw on the flop has 9 outs, an open-ended straight draw 8 outs.
• Rule of 2 and 4: multiply the number of outs by 4 to estimate the probability of improving with two cards to come, by 2 with only one. 9 outs on the flop is about 36% by the river, and 18% from the turn to the river.
• Implied odds: what you can hope to win on top if the draw comes in. They justify calling sometimes without the immediate odds, provided the stacks are deep and the opponent pays off.

Reading the opponent

• Think in ranges: do not try to guess the exact two cards, but the spread of hands consistent with their line of play since preflop. The right question is never "does he have the ace?" but "how many hands in his range beat me here?".
• Profiling: four main profiles, tight-passive (the "rock"), tight-aggressive (the winning profile), loose-passive (the "calling station", never to be bluffed), loose-aggressive (the "maniac", to be called more widely).
• Bet sizing: an amateur often bets big with a strong hand and small with a bluff. Sizing patterns are often worth more than any physical tell.
• Tells: in live play, consistency matters more than detail. A change in rhythm, breathing or chip handling is a signal; a permanent posture is not.

Stack management in tournaments

• Think in big blinds, never in chips. 28,000 chips means nothing; 70 BB or 8 BB does.
• More than 50 BB: full game, you can play speculative hands and post-flop.
• 20 to 40 BB: play tightens, and 3-bets often become commitments of the whole stack.
• Less than 15 BB: push/fold zone. You enter the pot all-in or you fold, intermediate raises no longer serve any purpose.
• ICM (Independent Chip Model): near the paid places and at the final table, a chip won is worth less than a chip lost. This justifies folding in situations that are profitable in pure chip expectation, especially on the "bubble".
• Short-handed and heads-up: the fewer the players, the more the opening frequency must rise. In heads-up, the button is also the small blind and plays more than 70% of its hands.

Discipline

• Bankroll: the usual rule is 20 to 50 buy-ins for a given tournament format, 20 to 30 buy-ins in cash games. It exists to absorb variance, not to limit ambition.
• Tilt: playing under the influence of emotion after a bad beat. It is statistically the number one cause of losses for otherwise competent players. The only reliable remedy is to leave the table.
• Variance: over a few dozen hands, luck dominates completely. Skill only becomes visible over several thousand hands.

4. Types of games

Three independent dimensions combine: the variant (hold'em, Omaha...), the betting structure (no limit, pot limit, limit) and the game format (cash game, tournament, sit and go).

Game formats

Cash game

• Chips have a direct monetary value. A 1 euro chip is worth 1 euro.
• The blinds never go up. The game can last indefinitely.
• You join and leave the table when you want, and you can rebuy at will.
• Minimum and maximum buy-ins are set, generally 50 to 100 big blinds.
• Strategy is geared to deep stacks, elaborate post-flop play, and long-term value rather than survival.

Tournament (MTT, multi-table tournament)

• A fixed entry fee (buy-in), and the same number of chips for everyone. Chips have no monetary value, they only serve to survive.
• The blinds go up following a structure of levels defined in advance. This is what forces eliminations and guarantees an ending.
• You play until one player has all the chips. The top 10 to 20% of players share the prize pool.
• Rebuys: buying back the starting stack during a limited period, often the first hour or two.
• Add-on: a one-time purchase of chips, generally at the end of the rebuy period, often better value than the initial buy-in.
• Freezeout: a variant with no rebuy or add-on, one life only.
• Bounty / knockout: part of the buy-in is a bounty handed to the player who eliminates you.
• Turbo / hyper-turbo: very short levels (3 to 8 minutes), maximum variance, push/fold play very quickly.
• Deepstack: a high starting stack relative to the blinds, with more technical play.
• Satellite: the prize is not money but a seat in a more expensive tournament.

Sit and go (SNG)

• A single-table tournament that starts as soon as the table is full, with no fixed schedule.
• Generally 6 or 9 players, 2 or 3 paid places.
• A highly codified format: the early, bubble and heads-up phases always follow one another in the same way, which makes it very easy to study.
• Variations: spin and go, with 3 players and a prize multiplier drawn at random, very fast and very high-variance.

Betting structures

In pot limit, the maximum raise is calculated as follows: call the current bet, then raise by the total pot once that call is included.

The main variants

• Texas hold'em: 2 private cards, 5 community cards. Mostly played no limit. The most played variant in the world.
• Omaha: 4 private cards, 5 community cards, but you must use exactly 2 private cards and 3 community cards. Very strong hands, huge pots, played pot limit (PLO).
• Omaha hi-lo (8 or better): the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand of 8 or lower.
• Seven card stud: no community cards, 7 cards per player, 4 of them face up. The king of American card rooms before hold'em, still played limit. Maximum 8 players.
• Razz: reversed seven card stud, the worst hand wins. The best hand is A-2-3-4-5.
• Five card draw: classic closed poker, 5 cards and a draw. The "family" poker in France.
• Short deck (6+ hold'em): hold'em without the cards from 2 to 5. The flush beats the full house, and equities are much tighter.
• Mixed formats: HORSE (Hold'em, Omaha hi-lo, Razz, Stud, Eight or better) rotates the variants every few rounds. Considered the most complete test of a versatile player.

Some table formats

• Full ring: 9 or 10 players. Tight play, strong hands are rewarded.
• 6-max: 6 players. The online standard, more aggressive, with more hands played.
• Heads-up: 2 players. Extremely wide and psychological play.
• Zoom / fast-fold: as soon as you fold, you are sent to a new table. Hand volume is multiplied, reading opponents is almost nil.

5. Glossary