Texas Hold Em Poker

There are four rounds of betting in limit Hold'em. The first round plays out before the flop (before the first three community cards are dealt, faceup), and on that first round you can bet and raise in one-unit increments. The second round occurs after the flop, and you can still bet and raise in exactly one-unit increments. The third round of betting occurs after the fourth card (fourth street or the turn) is flipped up, and now all bets and raises are made in two-unit increments. The fourth and final round of betting occurs after the fifth and final community card (the river) has been flipped up, and again you can bet and raise in two-unit increments.

Starting with the setup that I've illustrated (on page 19) in an eight-handed limit Hold'em hand, let's run through a $2-$4 sample hand. The dealer has dealt out two cards each, facedown, and the small blind of $1 and the big blind of $2 have been posted. Player one (PI) folds his hand, P2 (who holds, let's say, ace-jack, a hand that we will be referring to as A-J) raises, making it $4 to call the bet. P3, P4, and P5 all fold. P6, holding K-Q (king-queen), calls $4. The dealer and the small blind (SB) fold. The big blind (BB) calls the bet holding 9-8: because he already has $2 invested in the pot, it costs him only $2 more to see the flop. Now the dealer turns up a flop of 2-4-9.
Although P2 held the best preflop hand with his A-J, fortunes have changed on the flop. The player who sat in the BB with 9-8 is now the only player who has a pair (though he has no way to be certain of this), and suspecting that his pair might be the best hand, he bets $2. P2 and P6 somewhat loosely and stubbornly call the $2 bet, even though neither yet has a pair.

The turn card proves to be a 10, for a board of 2-4-9-10, and although the BB is a bit concerned by both this over card (a board card higher than his pair) and the fact that two players called his opening bet, he decides to stay aggressive and bets $4 (recall that third-round bets are doubled). P2 folds (wisely, because there are now only six cards in the deck that can save him—three aces and three jacks), and P6 (who now needs a jack for a straight, or a Q or a K to make him a pair) calls the $4 bet. P6's call is good, because with any jack, queen, or king probably winning for him, he has 10 probable winning cards, which are usually called outs in poker slang.

Fate isn't always just, however, and even though the odds were against it, the river card is a Q, for a 2-4-9-10-Q board, and the BB simply checks, figuring there is a good chance that if he wasn't already beaten by a starting hand like J-J or A-10, he is now vulnerable to any hand containing a queen. Now P6 bets $4, and BB sighs and calls the $4 bet. P6 shows his Q-K, for a pair of queens, and BB shows a 9-8 for his pair of nines. The pot is awarded to P6, who, perversely enough, had the second-best hand before the flop and the worst hand on both the flop and the turn!

• The Player To The Left Of The Two Blinds Acts First (0)
• Second Round Of Poker Betting (0)
• Two Poker Cards Are Dealt, Facedown (0)