Texas Hold'em is undoubtedly the most exhilarating and most influential innovation to happen to poker in, well, maybe forever.

Introduced to the poker world at large in the late 1960s by Doyle Brunson and the famed Texas road gamblers, Texas Hold'em has literally re-shaped poker as we knew it and helped create a poker boom still reverberating around the globe today.

Texas hold'em is played by a rotating dealer and the player on button receives last action on all post-flop streets of play. Once the hand completes, the player with the dealer button will pass it to the player left to him or her. The Blinds (blind Bets) There are two blinds in Holdem: a small blind and a big blind.

Texas Hold'em No-limit and pot-limit games, without exception. In limit games, when there are three or more players involved and all players have not gone all-in, games with two betting rounds (draw or lowball) will allow a bet, plus four raises. In a game which involves three or more betting rounds, the maximum raises allowed are three.
The basic rules of Texas Hold'em are quite simple. If you've played any poker at all, you're already familiar with hand ranks and standard betting options like bet, check, call, fold, and raise.
Below you will find the 2019 version of the Poker TDA Rules, Recommended Procedures and Illustration Addendum in English. For a downloadable copy in either MS Word or PDF format, and for foreign language translations visit our rules page. POKER TOURNAMENT DIRECTORS ASSN. 2019 Rules Version 1.0, Sept 17, 2019 Longform Version Includes: Recommended Procedures &Continue Reading.
TEXAS HOLD’EM –THE FLOW OF ACTION Let’s take a look at the flow of action in a typical No Limit Hold’em hand. efore any cards are dealt, mandatory blind payments known as the “small blind” and the “big blind” are contributed to the pot by the players occupying the small blind and big blind positions.

Why has Texas Holdem become the de facto poker game of choice for millions of poker players? And why is it still the benchmark for poker glory at the World Series of Poker?

That's easy. It's incredibly fun. And packed with multi-level strategy that draws on equal parts brains, nerves and complex psychology. It's also, importantly, not very hard to learn!

As the old saying goes, 'Texas Hold'em: it takes 2 minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.' We can help you with the 'master' part over in our poker strategy section; here we'll stick to the 2-minute part and introduce you to the official Texas Hold'em rules below.

How to Play Texas Hold'em

Texas Holdem is a community card game in which each player at the table is dealt two 'hole' cards face down. Each player then uses those two hole cards in combination with five communal board cards to make the best possible five-card poker hand.

You can win a Texas Hold'em hand by:

Having everyone else fold before the hand is over
Having the best 5-card poker hand at showdown

And that's essentially it. Texas Hold'em can be played in either cash game or tournament format (with dozens of variations) and with stakes from as small as 1c/2c all the way up to $500/$1,000 and above.

Tournaments offers buy ins from entirely free up to $1 million (eg. The Big One for One Drop at the World Series of Poker). Most poker tournaments online run with buy-ins of $1-30 with 10-15% of the tournament field making the money and getting paid a return on their buy-in.

Texas Hold'em rules can be broken up into a few essential categories:

Texas Hold'em Rules - The Button & the Blinds
Texas Hold'em Rules - The Deal
Texas Hold'em Rules - The First Betting Round
Texas Hold'em Rules - The Flop, Turn & River
Texas Hold'em Rules - The Showdown
Texas Hold'em Rules - Tournaments

Texas Holdem Tournament Rules Home

Texas Holdem Rules - The Button & the Blinds

A Texas Hold'em cash game is played at a single poker table with anywhere from 2-10 players. In a poker home game, the role of dealer usually passes from player to player with each hand, rotating to the left.

If the game is played online or in a live casino, a designated dealer will deal all of the cards for every round.

Where the deal starts is important, however, as the position of the players in relation to the dealer determines when they act in the hand. The player with the dealer button is the player who gets to act last in every hand. That gives them very important information as to the other players' holdings.

While the dealer spot is fixed in a live game, a dealer 'button' is used to represent the dealer spot and is passed to the left with every hand.

The blinds, meanwhile, are two 'forced' bets that are put into the pot before every hand. These are usually in simple increments like 1c/2c or $1/$2. The 'small blind' is the player immediately to the left of the dealer and puts in the smaller bet before each hand starts.

The 'big blind' is the player to the left of the dealer and puts in the bigger bet before each hand starts. This ensures each pot has some money in it for every hand.

As the dealer button moves on to the next player after every hand, so too do the blinds. That means once every orbit around the table each player will at least put in one small blind and one big blind into play.

In some Texas Holdem games (and in the later rounds of tournament play) an 'ante' is put in place to further bump up the value of the pot before the hand begins. Each player pays the ante into the pot before then hand is dealt.

Texas Holdem Rules - The Deal

Once all players have been properly seated at the table and the blinds and/or antes have been paid into the pot, the deal begins. Each player will receive one card face down, in sequences starting with the player to the left of the dealer, then followed up by a second card in sequence to each player.

These are the player's 'hole' cards. A player can use both hole cards, one hole cards or none of their hole cards when comprising their final 5-card poker hand.

The hole cards can be used in any combination with the 5 communal cards on the board to make up the highest ranked poker hand possible. If the highest hand possible is made up of all 5 cards on the communal board, it is called 'playing the board.'

Texas Holdem Rules - The First Betting Round

Texas Holdem is played in three different betting formats:

No-Limit
Fixed-Limit
Pot-Limit

In short, No-Limit means a player can bet the entire amount of their chips at any time. In Fixed Limit they may only bet a specified maximum amount in relation to the value of the blinds. In pot-limit the maximum bet is the current size of the pot.

For more detail on the different rules for Texas Holdem betting structures, see out articles here:

Texas Holdem games you've seen on TV, and most Texas Holde'm games in general these days, as played as No-Limit games. That means a player can go 'all in' at any point in the hand. This makes for very exciting TV and the spectacular outbursts you've likely seen during the World Series of Poker on ESPN.

Once the betting structure has been determined for each game, Texas Holdem is played with a small and a big blind -- two forced bets that are posted before the cards are dealt.

Once the blinds are posted each player is dealt two cards face down. When each player has their hole cards, it's time for the first betting round.

Starting with the player to the left of the big blind (called 'Under the Gun'), players in sequence either fold, 'call' the amount of the big blind (ie match the size of the big blind) or bet/raise.

In order to continue in a hand each player has to match the amount of the maximum bet (or equivalent). For example if the blinds are $1/$2 and someone raises the bet in their turn to $10, each player, including any players who have already acted in the hand, can now match that $10 in total or raise the bet even further.

The minimum bet in a Texas Hold'em game is equal to either twice the amount of the big blind (if no one has yet to raise) or twice the amount of the previous bet or raise.

Texas Holdem Rules - The Flop, Turn & River

When all the remaining players have contributed an equal amount to the pot, the next rounds of cards - in this case called

Texas Holdem Official Tournament Rules