game

of Texas Holdem Poker. Texas Holdem, it's been a big booming game hasn't it in the

Internet era?

And you can be a big part of it and the best thing to do is to learn how to play

it properly,

before you start playing the game that's what I'm here to do. I'm gonna teach you the

fundamentals

of Texas Hold' Em Poker.

What is it? I'ts a game of Poker against other players,

eventually theres gonna be seven cards in play. Two are kind of secretive, they're your

own cards.

Five cards layed out across the middle here and

the best player, the one with the strongest hand will win and I'll talk you through it.

You can see on the table here you've got something called a dealer button, you'll see

this when your playing online.

Everybody takes their turn to be dealer, the dealer button will move around after every

hand

so everyone takes their turn. To the left of the dealer,

that's the person who starts the betting of in every single hand,

they're called the small blind. That will be, in this case, here's the dealer. To the dealer's

left, here's your small blind, to their left

is what we call the the big blind. So what are the blinds? The blinds, they're

the things that start the action going, they're the things that, they're

compulsory bets so that we've got some action, we've got some betting to start every

hand off. In this case, we'll say the small blind is one of these

$5 chips here or £5 chips. So the small blind to the dealers left will be

five,

and the big blind has to be twice as much. So in this case, we'll call this, this is what we

call a 5-10 game, the 5 being the small blind, the 10 being the big blind.

You'll see games of all different levels on the website. This will be a 5-10 game this case.

Five blind, 10 big blind. So that's started our betting going hasn't it?

What happens next? We've got our table set, we've got our players.

We have the cards dealt out initially. You have just 2 cards each so

out come the cards. We'll have three players playing in this example.

Two cards to each player. And the players,

as the cards go over the line there, will have a little look at their cards, a little think, have they made a good

start to the

hand. We've got the betting started so we've gone small blind here, we've

got the big blind here would say the action,

the next person to act in the hand is again, as it moves round clockwise, the player

to the left here. So we've got the small blind and the big blind, so what does the player here have to do next?

Well, the action is now 10, that's him out of the bet,

so they've now got three different choices. Very common

term in the world Poker are these three phrases;

They are to fold, they are to call and they are to raise.

So lets go through the three different options that the player in the third position here in

this example.

If he folds, that's pretty straight forward, he looks his cards, he sees that the betting is

10 and he thinks "Oh, that ones too expensive, I don't have a very strong hand,

discretion is the better part of valor, i'm gonna fold my hand."

So, the cards will be folded, nothing ventured, you can actually have many hands in

Poker

where you don't lose any money in the game. Quite nice.

.There's a second option, is to call, to think "Well, I'm not doing too badly,

but I don't want to commit too much to the hand". To call

at this stage, would be just to match the bet which was 10 there,

The bet will again be 10 more. If he does that, the action keeps moving around in a

clockwise direction until it comes to the next player. The third

option is to raise. Now raising is when you

add money to the pot, you build it up. You possibly call it by playing aggressively,

an aggressive player does a lot of raising

and to raise you have to double the amount

that's been bet previously. Here the amount is 10,

so if the player in the third box was going to raise, the minimum he would be able to do that

would be 20.

He couldn't bet 15, that wouldn't be allowed. You have to double it up. So, he can bet 20 or

more.

So we'll say he's bet 20, the action then moves round the table,

the player in the box here, he has to now have 20 committed to the pot.

He's got 5, we'll put him in for 20 and we'll move the action round the next part to his

left,

he's again got the same options, he's committed for 10, the bets 20,

he can fold, he can call it at 20 or he can raise it again.

We'll put him in for a call. At this stage,

everyone's got the same amount committed to the pot, that's when the round of betting ends

and all the money, goes as we say, into the pot that's going to be played out at the end. So that's the end of the first round of betting.