A Beginner’s Guide to Poker – Learn the Rules

Dec 04, 2020
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The secret to poker’s enduring popularity may be that it occupies a sweet spot between games of chance and games of skill. No one knows what cards will be dealt – that’s random. But over time, better players win more. Winning at poker requires a mix of luck, in-depth knowledge of the game, and insight into human nature.

There are many ways to learn the game. This beginner’s guide to poker is a quick outline of the vocabulary, rules, and game dynamics. It should be enough to help you get started.

Poker seems simple at first, but the best players incorporate layers of subtlety. Ultimately there is no substitute for experience. Once you’ve mastered the basics, the way to play better poker is to play more poker. See what works and what doesn’t for the unique player you are.

All of that comes later. Let’s start with the basics.

Poker Vocabulary

When you’re learning how to play poker, it helps to pick up the terminology. Poker has its own vocabulary of special words and expressions. Many of these have made their way into mainstream language, both in the business world and in everyday life. Some obvious examples: I’m calling your bluff. She holds her cards close to her chest. He’s wearing his poker face.

I’d rather be lucky than good.

These common sayings are just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond these everyday sayings are many words and phrases that belong to the world of poker jargon. To those who have just started learning to play poker, they will seem like a foreign language.

Here is some of the essential jargon you are likely to hear at the poker table:

All in: A player is all in when they put all their chips in the pot, betting all their chips on the current hand. The player doesn’t participate in subsequent bets for the remainder of the hand. There’s a side-pot for other players, but the all-in player is eligible only for the main pot.

Ante: This is a small forced bet that all players must make for each hand before the cards are dealt. Everyone antes the same amount in many poker games. In Texas hold ’em, the blinds are antes.

Backdoor: In Texas hold ’em poker practice, a backdoor hand is one in which your hand is completed with the two final face-up cards, the turn and the river. The term implies you’re hoping for different cards, but you make an unlikely winning hand with the two face-up cards. A backdoor hand is sometimes called “runner runner.”

Bad beat: This is a good hand that’s beaten by a hand that hit a lucky draw.

Big slick: Ace and king.

Blinds: Mandatory bets called the small and big blinds are made by the first two players to the left of the dealer button in Texas hold ’em and other games.

Bluff: You bluff when you bet without having one of the best poker hands to play. Your hope is that other players will believe you have a strong hand so they will fold and you will win the pot.

Calling station: This is a derogatory term for a player who calls too often, typically when their hands don’t justify continued betting.

Cards speak: At the end of the hand, players turn their cards face-up to reveal who has the best hand. The cards speak for themselves.

Check raise: You check when it’s your turn to bet and then, after another player bets, you raise.

Donkey: This is a disparaging term for an opponent who doesn’t play well. Such players are also called pigeons, suckers, or fish.

Drawing dead: In the parlance of basic poker hands rankings, this is a draw that guarantees whatever card comes next, you will lose.

Flop: In Texas hold ’em, the three shared cards dealt face-up after the first round of betting are called the flop.

Heads-up: Playing against one opponent.

Isolate: This strategy entails making a raise to force others to fold so you can play heads-up against a single opponent.

Monster: A very strong hand with high chances of being a winner.

Muck: Muck refers to the act of folding and to the pile of dead cards that were formerly in your hand.

Nuts: In poker-for-dummies terms, this is the best available hand.

Out: An out is a card that improves your hand, especially to winning status. If you hold two hearts and two hearts are on the flop, you have nine outs to the nut flush – the remaining nine hearts in the deck.

Pocket rockets: In Texas Hold’em, the term refers to a pair of aces as your hole cards.

Quads: A combination of four of a kind.

Rags: These are worthless cards such as small board cards in Texas hold ’em.

Rainbow: The term “rainbow” refers to three or four cards of different suits. According to jargon conventions and poker game rules, a flop with cards of three different suits is said to be a rainbow.

River: The fifth and final shared face-up card dealt in Texas hold ’em.

Sandbag: A deceptive ploy to increase profits. You hide the strength of your hand by making only small bets at the beginning of the hand. More players stay in play, and you wind up winning more when your hand takes the pot.

Set: When you have a pocket pair and a card of the same rank hits the board, a set is created.

String bet: According to the rules of poker, this is an illegal move. It happens when a player doesn’t openly declare his intention to raise but just puts out chips to call and then reaches back to his stack to add more chips for a raise.

Tilt: A player might be on tilt after a series of bad beats. The player has lost focus and begun playing too loosely and aggressively to win a pot.

Trips: When two cards of the same rank are exposed face-up on the board and you have another of them in your hand, that’s trips. In basic poker hand rankings, it’s worth distinguishing sets and trips because only one person can hold the three cards to a set while two players can have the same trips.

Under the gun: the first player to the left of the dealer bets first. That player is said to be under the gun.

Wheel: Also called the bicycle wheel or bike, a wheel is the smallest possible straight: A-2-3-4-5.

Educating Yourself

No matter which game you like, one of the best ways to build up an effective working knowledge of poker game rules is to read a lot. Articles and books will help you get inside the heads of great poker players and the living legends of tournament poker.

There are many archived articles and accounts on the internet, most free to read, with valuable information that will reward days and weeks of careful study. All this reading may be time-consuming, but it costs you nothing to pile up knowledge and improve your poker skills. With more knowledge, you’ll also boost your self-confidence.

You’ll probably encounter a lot of information that is not typically found in a beginner’s guide to poker, and much of it isn’t applicable when you are starting out and making small bets.

The info will help you develop a better understanding of the goal and purpose of the game, however. And it might help you make sense of televised poker tournaments.

Start by playing low-stakes games at home with friends and family. Eventually, you’ll develop the skills and confidence to venture into real poker games in real casinos, either online or in brick-and-mortar gambling establishments. You’ll sit securely at the table with a bankroll that can sustain simple fluctuations of luck.

The question “How do you play poker?” won’t seem so difficult to answer at that point.

The good thing about reading books or watching instructional videos on YouTube and elsewhere is that you can always go back and review the information later when you have a broader context to fit it into. Reviewing the material can open your mind to new interpretations of familiar situations and allow you to come up with creative solutions. The better you understand poker, the more you’ll enjoy it – and the better your chances of winning.

How a Poker Game Works

“How does poker work?” is the first thing beginners want to know. Some aspects of poker are common to all versions of the game, and others are specific to particular games: Omaha, stud, Texas hold ’em, five-card draw, and many others. Texas hold ’em has developed into the most popular poker game in the world due to televised big-money tournaments, and it is now the kind of game that beginners ask to learn.

No-limit Texas hold ’em uses a standard 52-card deck in the casino and online. There can be as few as two or as many as 10 players at the table. Whether you’re practicing poker with your friends or learning poker online, the following tips are your basic rules.

The dealer starts by dealing each player two cards, starting with the player sitting on his left and finishing with the player on his right. The player on the dealer’s left plays first, and the choices are to bet or check. To bet, the player announces the size of the bet and puts chips into the pot at the center of the table. If the player wants to see what others do before deciding whether to bet, he simply says “check” and play moves to the next player.

Players can check one after another until one of the players with good poker hands makes a bet.

When a player decides to bet, other players can call. That means they match the bet by adding chips to the pot, and it keeps them in the hand. Players can also raise, which means putting more into the pot. Other players must now match the higher amount to stay in the hand. If they don’t wish to match the bet, they can fold, which means leaving the game until the next hand, leaving all their chips in the pot. This goes on until every player has called.

That’s the end of the first round of betting but it’s not the end of our quick guide to poker or even the hand.

When the first betting round is completed, the dealer deals three cards on the board – that is, in the center of the table where everyone can see them – face-up. This is called the flop. These are community cards that remain in place. You can use any or all of them, in combination with the first two cards you were dealt, to make a poker hand.

Another round of betting takes place. When that round is over, the dealer puts a fourth face-up card on the table. This card is called the turn.

After another round of betting, the dealer puts a fifth and final face-up card on the table. According to Texas hold ’em poker rules, this card is called the river. Players who are still in the hand conduct a final round of betting.

If there are still two or more players remaining in the hand, the players’ cards are exposed and the entire pot goes to the player with the highest-ranking hand.

Poker Hands

The game of Texas hold ’em is all about using the hole cards and table cards to develop a winning hand. You won’t get very far if you don’t know what a winning hand looks like or what combinations of cards beat other combinations. What you need is a beginner’s guide to poker hands so you’ll know what kind of hand should inspire you to check, bet, raise, or fold.

A poker hand is generally a combination of five cards. From highest to lowest rank, the hands are:

  • Royal Flush (All the same suit, sequence A-K-Q-J-T)
  • Straight Flush (Any sequence, all the same suit)
  • Four of a Kind (Four cards of the same rank, or value)
  • Full House (Three of a kind and a pair)
  • Flush (Five cards of the same suit)
  • Straight (A basic sequence such as 6-5-4-3-2)
  • Three of a kind (Three cards of the same rank)
  • Two pair (Two pairs)
  • Pair (Any two cards of the same rank)
  • High Card (Whatever your highest card is)

A good poker tutorial is essential in helping to dispel common misconceptions about hand ranking.

For example, many newbies intuitively believe that a straight beats a flush, but that’s not right. Having five cards of the same suit – a flush – is a better hand than a five-card sequence, or straight.

Also, three of a kind beats two pairs, though many newcomers to the game find that counter-intuitive.
In case multiple players have a straight, flush, full house, or another hand, the highest one wins. A king-high flush beats a flush in which the highest card is a 10.

Basic Poker Strategy

A beginner’s guide to playing poker should advise starting with low-stakes games. There’s no need to rush into high-stakes games as a novice. As a beginner, you need to realize that your goal is to learn good poker strategy without breaking the bank.

There are several solid reasons why you should start at low stakes. First, you’ll feel much calmer knowing you won’t be risking a lot of your money. Even if you do lose some, it won’t hurt much if you’re playing in a low-stakes game. Playing with low stakes will allow you to be more relaxed and focus on learning the game. And you’ll learn that it’s almost as much fun to win a $10 pot as a $100 pot.

When playing different types of poker, low stakes let you learn the new game without risking a lot of money. Starting at the low end allows you to play against weaker players and learn how to bet instead of just losing pot after pot to seasoned players. Finally, your low-stakes “beginner” games will give you a chance to grasp the whole picture and get the feel of the entire game – the positions, the strategy, and different hands to play. You’ll need that knowledge when you play real games later.

A common mistake among amateur poker players is that they play too “wide,” which means playing hands that are unlikely to win. Good poker tips include the advice that you should play only your strongest hands, especially when you’re just starting. That can help you avoid hard decisions after the flop. You’ll play less but more aggressively when you’ve got good cards to back up your bets.

At low-stakes games, players will often bet on random hands, knowing that this will give them an advantage. This strategy lets you learn poker without losing a lot of money. Knowing that you hold a better hand will allow you to plan your moves and ultimately win.