rules
Poker rules.
Cards are dealt, money goes in over several rounds, and the best five card hand still in at the end takes it. Every poker game is a variation on that sentence. Four things below are true in all of them; after that it is worth knowing which game you are playing.
true in every variant
The best five cards win
Every variant asks the same question at the end: who has the best five card hand. The ranking from royal flush down to high card is the same in almost every game, and only short deck changes it.
You can win without the best hand
If everyone else folds, the pot is yours and nobody ever sees your cards. Most pots end this way. That is why poker is a betting game with cards in it, and not a card game with betting in it.
You can only lose what is in front of you
Your stack on the table is the maximum you can lose in a hand, and the maximum you can win from any one opponent. Nobody can force you to add more mid hand. This is what "table stakes" means.
Acting later is worth more than most cards
The player who acts last has seen what everyone else did. That information is worth more than a slightly better starting hand, which is why position is the first thing serious players learn.
The first of those four depends on knowing the order, and that order is the one thing in poker you have to learn by heart. It is on the page with all ten hands from best to worst, including how often each one actually shows up.
the variants
Texas Hold'em
Two cards each, five shared, four betting rounds.
The game almost everyone means when they say poker. If you learn one set of rules, learn these.
Omaha
Four cards each, and you must use exactly two.
Bigger hands, bigger pots, and the rule people get wrong most often: two from your hand, three from the board, always.
Short deck
The twos through fives are removed.
A 36 card deck, which changes the hand rankings themselves: a flush beats a full house.
Seven card stud
No shared cards. Seven of your own, some face up.
The game poker was before Hold’em took over. No flop, no button, more memory.
Razz
Stud, but the lowest hand wins.
Aces play low and straights and flushes are ignored, so five four three two ace is the best hand there is. A pair is a problem.
Five card draw
Five cards each, one draw, two betting rounds.
The kitchen table game, and the fastest there is. No board, so the number of cards somebody draws is all you ever see.
Badugi
Four cards, three draws, a ranking of its own.
No pairs, no straights, no flushes. You want four cards that are all a different suit and a different rank, as low as possible.
Betting rounds
Who acts, and when the round is over.
The five actions, the four rounds, the minimum raise, and the difference between no limit, pot limit and fixed limit. True in every game above.
All in and side pots
What happens when somebody cannot match a bet.
The main pot, the side pot and the money that goes back, worked out layer by layer. The situation kitchen tables argue about most.
Casino games
Poker against the house, and why that is a different game.
Three card poker, Ultimate Texas Hold'em and Caribbean stud, with the house edge for each. You are not playing other players here, and that changes what practice can do for you.
Table etiquette
The rules nobody writes on the table.
Acting in turn, not talking about a live hand, keeping your chips visible, and showing cards in the right order at the end.
How to deal
Shuffle, cut, burn, deal, and move the button.
A hand dealt from start to finish, plus what a dealer does about a misdeal, an exposed card or a bet made in two motions.
next
Rules stick when you use them.
Play a few hands in the browser against a bot. No account, no download, no money. You will forget half of this page by tomorrow and remember the hand where you got it wrong.
questions
What are the basic rules of poker?
Players are dealt cards, bet in rounds, and the best five card hand wins whatever has been bet. You can also win by betting enough that everyone else folds, in which case your cards are never shown. The variants differ in how many cards you get and how many are shared, but that core is the same in all of them.
Which poker game should I learn first?
No limit Texas Hold'em. It has the simplest rules of the common variants, it is what almost every game online and in a casino runs, and everything you learn transfers to the others.
Is poker a game of luck or skill?
Both, and the ratio depends entirely on how long you look. Over one hand luck decides almost everything. Over a hundred thousand hands skill decides almost everything. The uncomfortable part is how long the middle lasts: over a thousand hands the margin of error on a winrate is usually wider than the winrate itself.
How many cards does each player get?
Two in Texas Hold'em, four in Omaha, seven in seven card stud. In Hold'em and Omaha you combine them with shared community cards; in stud there are none.