Like all poker games, Hold'em has a very specific order in which the cards are dealt and played.
- What Is The Blinds In Poker
- What Is The Meaning Of Blinds In Poker
- What Is The Point Of Blinds In Poker Winnings
- What Is The Point Of Blinds In Poker Tournament
There is nothing 'unfair' when it comes to the blinds, because the blinds 'go over' all the players at the table in a Round Robin method. The blinds have some purposes, the most important of which are: causes at least one player (the small blind) to lose chips in the hand and by doing that, it gives him/her motivation to participate in the hand.
Orbit Cost = Ante(s) + Small Blind + Big Blind An orbit is X amount of hands of poker at a table where X equals the number of players (e.g. Everyone has the dealer button once). Therefore, Orbit Cost is the sum of the blinds and antes for one player for one orbit. Poker Beginners Guide: Blind Bets The two players to the left of the button (dealer) in a game of hold'em are required to place compulsory bets before the cards are dealt. These are known as blind bets because they are placed 'blind', before the players have even seen their cards.
Hole cards
At the start of a Hold'em hand, after the two blinds have been posted, all players are dealt two cards facedown. These are known as the hole or pocket cards. Players then make a decision to call the blinds (match the big blind), raise the blinds (increase the bet) or fold (quit playing and throw their cards facedown to the middle of the table).
In the form of Hold'em known as Limit, the bets have to be of a certain specified amount. In No-Limit, players may bet any amount of their chips on the table.
If you're a newbie to the game, you might consider this: If both of your hole cards are not 10s or greater (Jacks, Queens, Kings, or Aces), fold. Yes, it sounds harsh, but it'll keep you pretty much only playing the cards that you should — and about the right frequency of hands.
Make sure not to show your hole cards to other players at the table (even if those other players are no longer in the hand). And after you've looked at your cards, you should protect them from being collected by the dealer by placing an extra poker chip (or some other small object) on top of them.
The flop
After the betting action is done on the round with the hole cards (also known as pre-flop), three cards are displayed by the dealer simultaneously to the center of the poker table — this is known as the flop. At this point, each player at the table has a unique five-card poker hand consisting of his two hole cards and the three community cards.
Because of the raw number of cards involved, the flop typically gives you the general tenor of the poker hand and definitely gives you a good idea of the kind of hand to look for as a winner. For example, an all-Spade flop (especially with a lot of players still in the hand) will be hinting at a flush as a strong possibility for a winner.
Betting begins with the first person still in the hand to the left (clockwise) of the dealer button. As a general rule, you want your hand to match the flop, and you should fold if it doesn't.
In Limit play, the size of the bet you can make on the flop is identical to the amount you can make pre-flop.
The turn
After the flop betting round is completed, another community card is placed, known as the turn (or sometimes fourth street). Each of the remaining players now has a six-card poker hand made up of his two private hole cards and the four community cards. Hold'em is a game where only five cards count toward a poker hand, so everyone has a theoretical 'extra' card at this point.
In Limit, the betting is now twice the amount that was bet pre- and post-flop.
Poker wags like to say, 'The turn plays itself,' meaning your hand gets better and you bet it, or it doesn't and you start giving strong thoughts to folding. This is more or less true.
The river
After the betting round of the turn, a final community card is exposed, known as the river (sometimes called fifth street).
Each player left in the game has his final hand consisting of the best five cards of the seven available (two private hole cards and the five community cards). Players may use two hole cards along with three community cards, one hole card combined with four community cards, or just the five community cards (known as playing the board). Again, poker hands are made up of the best five cards — the other two available to any given player don't count. There is one final round of betting.
The showdown
The showdown is what happens after the final river bets have been placed. Although it isn't formally required, typically the person who initiated the final round of betting is first to show her hand. The action then proceeds in a clockwise fashion with players either mucking their hands if they can't beat the hand exposed, or showing a better hand (at which point the dealer mucks the old, 'worse' hand and continues around the table for any remaining hands).
Winners and losers are determined by the standard poker hand rankings.
If you're ever unclear about who is winning a hand, just turn your cards face up and let the dealer decide. Never take a player's word on what she has in hand until you've actually seen her cards with your own eyes — when you muck a hand, it's officially dead.
The series of articles 'Casino Poker for Beginners' is intended for people who have played poker online and/or in home games, but have little or no experience playing in a 'brick-and-mortar' or at an online casino.
Casinos have rules, procedures, and points of etiquette that can trip up players on their first few visits — or at least confuse and mystify them.
I hope to explain these to you in advance so that you don't get intimidated or embarrassed.
Understanding them might also keep you from losing money by inadvertently breaking a rule during the game.
The articles in this series will focus specifically on how poker in casinos differs from what you have learned from playing casino poker games like three-card poker online or at friends' home games, particularly in what might be termed its 'procedural' aspects.
I work from the assumption that readers have enough experience under their belts at one or both of those other types of poker games to feel comfortable playing them and would like to try adding casino poker to their repertoire.
For this first installment, I'll give you a step-by-step guide for getting into a cash game. I'll cover entering a casino poker tournament in a later column.
Figuring Out What Games Are Available
So you've taken the trip to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Tunica, Los Angeles, or any of the other many poker destinations that are now available in the U.S. and around the world. You've selected which poker room to patronize. Now what?
Your first step is to know what games are available.
Poker rooms vary in how they communicate game availability to would-be players. Most now have a large-screen TV listing the games and the names of any people waiting to play. Some use a manually updated white board.
The smallest rooms sometimes still use one person behind a desk with a simple piece of paper, and you have to ask what games are available. But let's say that by one of these methods you learn that the choices are listed as follows:
- 2-4 limit hold'em
- 4-8 limit hold'em
- 1-2 no-limit hold'em
- 2-5 no-limit hold'em
- 4-8 Omaha-8
Often you'll see a number in parentheses after such listings, which tells you how many tables of each game are in play. Some places display the actual table numbers. (Each table in a poker room has a fixed identification number.) If there are names under the game heading, that tells you who is waiting to play.
What the Numbers Mean
The stakes of the game are communicated by the pair of numbers in front of the name of the game. Confusingly, the numbers mean different things for different games.
In hold'em and Omaha (i.e., the so-called 'flop games'), fixed-limit games are named by the size of the bets you can make. For example, '4-8 limit hold'em' means that the bets and raises are each $4 for the first two betting rounds of each hand (before the flop and on the flop), and $8 on the turn and river.
The blinds in these games are typically one-half of those values, or $2 and $4 in this example, though some casinos use different structures. Stud games (and draw games, if you can ever find one) follow the same convention — the numbers in the name of the game represent allowable bet sizes.
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But just when you think you understand that, you discover that no-limit games are listed differently. '1-2 no-limit hold'em' does not mean that the bets are $1 and $2 — that would violate the whole concept of a 'no-limit' structure. Instead, these games are named by the size of the two blinds, in this case the small blind being $1 and the big blind $2.
To make it even more confusing, a few casinos — most notably the largest ones in southern California — eschew the conventions I've just described in favor of a bewildering hodge-podge of buy-ins and blinds as the titles of their games.
For example, a '$40 NL' game will mean no-limit hold'em with buy-in of exactly $40 — no more and no less — with blinds unstated but understood to be $1 and $2. There are other variations used in these places that are too numerous to detail here. But don't worry — just tell them that it's your first time there, and they'll be happy to explain what the words, numbers, and abbreviations mean. Just about everywhere else, the explanations above will serve you well.
Buying In and Taking a Seat
Okay, so let's say you've decided which of the offered games you'd like to play. Now just approach the person poised to greet you at the entrance to the poker room and tell him or her what you're interested in. You will either be put on the waiting list for a opening, or, if you're lucky, directed or escorted directly to a vacant seat in an active game.
If you have to wait, be sure that you don't wander off to someplace where you can't hear your name being called. Some poker rooms now offer to call or text your cell phone when it's your turn, in which case you're free to go do something else while you wait. However, I think it's a better idea to stick around and watch (from a respectable distance) a game of the type you plan to play, in order to get a sense for what's happening.
Next you'll need to convert some cash into chips. But how much? The amount for which you can or must buy in to a game is related to the sizes of the blinds and/or bets, but not in any obvious or standardized way. Most commonly, the buy-in is capped at 100, 150, or 200 times the amount of the big blind in no-limit games. However, you can find poker rooms with substantially smaller buy-in caps, and some with no caps at all.
There's no reliable way to figure this out on your own; you just have to ask an employee. Limit games are often officially uncapped, but you'd be looked at oddly if you bought into a fixed-limit game for more than about 50 big blinds, because stack sizes are not usually an important factor in how the game plays.
The blinds in these games are typically one-half of those values, or $2 and $4 in this example, though some casinos use different structures. Stud games (and draw games, if you can ever find one) follow the same convention — the numbers in the name of the game represent allowable bet sizes.
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But just when you think you understand that, you discover that no-limit games are listed differently. '1-2 no-limit hold'em' does not mean that the bets are $1 and $2 — that would violate the whole concept of a 'no-limit' structure. Instead, these games are named by the size of the two blinds, in this case the small blind being $1 and the big blind $2.
To make it even more confusing, a few casinos — most notably the largest ones in southern California — eschew the conventions I've just described in favor of a bewildering hodge-podge of buy-ins and blinds as the titles of their games.
For example, a '$40 NL' game will mean no-limit hold'em with buy-in of exactly $40 — no more and no less — with blinds unstated but understood to be $1 and $2. There are other variations used in these places that are too numerous to detail here. But don't worry — just tell them that it's your first time there, and they'll be happy to explain what the words, numbers, and abbreviations mean. Just about everywhere else, the explanations above will serve you well.
Buying In and Taking a Seat
Okay, so let's say you've decided which of the offered games you'd like to play. Now just approach the person poised to greet you at the entrance to the poker room and tell him or her what you're interested in. You will either be put on the waiting list for a opening, or, if you're lucky, directed or escorted directly to a vacant seat in an active game.
If you have to wait, be sure that you don't wander off to someplace where you can't hear your name being called. Some poker rooms now offer to call or text your cell phone when it's your turn, in which case you're free to go do something else while you wait. However, I think it's a better idea to stick around and watch (from a respectable distance) a game of the type you plan to play, in order to get a sense for what's happening.
Next you'll need to convert some cash into chips. But how much? The amount for which you can or must buy in to a game is related to the sizes of the blinds and/or bets, but not in any obvious or standardized way. Most commonly, the buy-in is capped at 100, 150, or 200 times the amount of the big blind in no-limit games. However, you can find poker rooms with substantially smaller buy-in caps, and some with no caps at all.
There's no reliable way to figure this out on your own; you just have to ask an employee. Limit games are often officially uncapped, but you'd be looked at oddly if you bought into a fixed-limit game for more than about 50 big blinds, because stack sizes are not usually an important factor in how the game plays.
Let's suppose you're going to play $2/$4 limit hold 'em, and you've decided to buy in for the maximum this casino allows for this game, which is, say, $200. There are four different ways you might exchange your cash for poker chips.
- The person at the front podium who signs you in might also serve as the room's cashier.
- He or she might direct you to a separate cashier's 'cage' to purchase chips.
- You might be instructed to buy your chips from the dealer when you sit down.
- After you take your seat, they might have a 'chip runner' take your money and bring you chips.
What Is The Blinds In Poker
Again, which method a given place uses (and it can change depending on how busy they are) is not usually obvious, even to experienced players — you just have to ask. Meeste winkans holland casino sports betting.
Congratulations! You're past the first set of hurdles, and seated in your first casino poker game, with a fresh stack of chips stacked neatly in front of you. In the next 'Casino Poker for Beginners' entry, I'll start to delve into what the casino expects of you as a player at one of its tables.
What Is The Meaning Of Blinds In Poker
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.
What Is The Point Of Blinds In Poker Winnings
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What Is The Point Of Blinds In Poker Tournament
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