Pillar Guide

How to Play Texas Hold'em

Key Takeaways

• Two forced bets, the small blind and big blind, start the pot before any cards are seen.
• Betting happens four times per hand: pre-flop, flop, turn, and river.
• You can win a hand two ways — by having the best cards at showdown, or by getting every other player to fold.
• Position (acting later in a round) is a real, measurable advantage — it's worth learning before you learn anything else.

Table setup and the deal

Hold'em is usually played with 2 to 10 players around one table. A small disc called the dealer button marks who is "on the button" for that hand; the button moves one seat to the left after every hand so everyone takes a turn acting last. The two players to the left of the button post forced bets called the blinds before any cards are dealt: the small blind and, next to it, the big blind (usually double the small blind).

Once the blinds are posted, the dealer gives each player two private cards, face down. These are your hole cards, and you're the only one who can see them.

Pre-flop betting

Starting with the player to the left of the big blind, each player chooses to fold (discard their hand), call (match the current bet), or raise (increase it). This continues until every player still in the hand has put in the same amount of chips. This is the "pre-flop" round, because it happens before any community cards are shown.

The flop

The dealer burns one card (discards it face down) and then deals three community cards face-up in the middle of the table — this is the flop. Every remaining player can use these three cards. A new betting round begins, starting with the first active player to the left of the button.

The turn

Another card is burned, and a fourth community card is dealt face-up: the turn. A third betting round follows the same pattern as the flop.

The river and showdown

One more card is burned and the fifth and final community card is dealt: the river. After the last betting round, any players still in the hand reveal their cards — this is showdown. Each player builds the best possible five-card hand from their two hole cards and the five community cards (see hand rankings). The best hand wins the pot; if two hands tie exactly, the pot is split.

If every other player folds at any point before showdown, the last remaining player wins the pot immediately and doesn't need to show their cards.

Practical advice for your first sessions

1. Play fewer starting hands than feels natural. See our starting hands guide for a position-based chart.
2. Watch the betting, not just your cards. A big bet on a scary board usually means something — pay attention.
3. Start at stakes where a loss doesn't bother you. Learning under financial stress leads to worse decisions.
4. Track your sessions. Short-term results are noisy; you need volume to know if a decision was actually good.

Common mistakes

• Playing too many hands out of position, especially from early seats.
• Calling large bets "to see what happens" instead of asking what hand would make that bet.
• Confusing a single session's results with whether a strategy is working — see our note on variance in the research library.
• Ignoring stack sizes: the same hand can be a fold at 15 big blinds and a raise at 60.

FAQ

Related Reading

Sources

Rules described here reflect standard Texas Hold'em play as codified in widely used cardroom rulebooks (e.g. Robert's Rules of Poker) and standard tournament rules used by major poker tours. Specific house rules can vary slightly by cardroom.

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