The game of poker is very complicated, and as much a game of cards as it is a test of your ability to read your opponent. Any slight, almost imperceptible change in behavior could be the difference between knowing if the player next to you has a royal flush or a handful of nothing.
Poker has been around since the 1800s, but Texas Hold ‘Em, one of the most popular versions of poker, comes from Robstown, TX., in the early 1900s. The best advice I could give if you’re planning on playing is to know who you’re up against, but if you need a bit of the basics, then there are at least a few pointers that may give you an ace in the hole (not literally).
How to Play Poker
Everyone should be sitting around in a circle, or at least an oval, and betting of either money or chips will start after two cards are dealt out to each player and two initial bets are made – those are called the “blinds”, a large bet and a small one that’s half of the large bet and they come from the players to the left of the dealer. This is called the “pre-flop” and it’s your first chance to get a read on the other players. Just remember to actually look at your cards before you start betting. Once everyone around the table either folds or finishes betting, then we move on to the “flop”, where the dealer shows three cards to the entire table, called the “community cards”.
Hopefully, if you stuck around past the flop, then you have at least a passable set of cards in the hole or you think you can trick your friends into believing you do. If you’re completely lost, though, don’t worry! This is the second major chance you have to gain an advantage, as aside from reading your opponents during the flop, you can finally start forming a good hand out of your hand and the community cards. Here you can start looking for five-card hands like flushes, 5 cards of the same suit (Diamonds, Clubs, Spades, Hearts) or straights, 5 cards in a row (6, 7, 8, 9, 10), but any hand is better than nothing, and if you’re especially lucky, you might have a straight flush.
Betting starts up again after the flop, and after this round of betting comes the “turn” and the “river”, which are both kinda like the flop but only one card is shown at a time in between the rounds of betting. The turn and the river are either your chances to secure your victory, or if you have particularly horrible luck, your last chances to fold before you get sent up the river without a paddle.
Finally, we reach the end of the line, mano a mano, winner takes all, the “showdown”. Every player shows their cards, and a winner is determined, and this is where we get into the fringe cases. It should be obvious that pairs of 4’s beat pairs of 2’s, but sometimes players will have the exact same hands right down to the number, in which case the winner would be determined by a “kicker”, or whoever has higher cards in their own hand on top of the played hand, a pair of queens with a king as a kicker, for example. After you either win the pot or lose big time then the cards are collected and reshuffled, the dealer button is given to the person on the dealer’s left, and another round can start. If everything went right, then you might be sitting on a pretty sum, but in the worst-case scenario, you might owe your fair share and then some, so my final piece of advice is not to be afraid of folding, because it’s always better to not play than to walk home without enough money for gas!
