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General Poker Rules and Poker Game Types

December 30, 2009

Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings.

Poker games differ in the way the cards are dealt, formation of hands, whether the high or low hand wins the pot , limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed. The action always proceeds to the left.

Each player in turn must either match the maximum previous bet or fold, losing the amount bet so far and all further interest in the hand.

A player who matches a bet may also raise, increasing the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either matched the last bet or folded. If all but one player fold on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without showing his hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, the hands are shown and the winning hand takes the pot.

  1. Texas Holdem
  2. Seven Card Draw
  3. Red Dog Poker
  4. Razz
  5. Omaha
  6. Five Card Poker
  7. Pai Gow
  8. Crazy Pineapple Poker

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Decent players have a good understanding about when to fold preflop. You want to play premium hands preflop. In terms of marginal hands, you want to play suited connectors/small pairs more when it is a multi-way pot and less so when it is about three people seeing the flop. For big cards such as AJ or KT, the opposite is the case. Be more willing to play these hands in a heads up or three way situation. There are 3 rounds of betting post flop, and the decisions you make are not automatic. Small Mistakes vs. Big Mistakes In Limit Hold'em, the bets are a small fraction of the pot. This encourages action because it is cheaper to see a showdown. This aspect of Limit appeals to fish and new players who like to 'see cards.' Most bad players lose money at Limit Hold'em over time and not one any one big hand. This is because they continually make small mistakes and play every hand. They call when they do not have pot odds, or they continue to call when they are clearly beat. Every time you call when you shouldn't, you are making a small mistake. A big mistake at Limit Hold'em is folding when you should not have. I do not mean folding early and then later finding out you would have hit a miracle river. I mean folding when you have the best hand late in the pot. For example, suppose you have AQ. The board is KQ2 rainbow. You raised the pot preflop and there were 3 callers (8 small bets). It is checked around to you. You bet, someone raises, 2 people call, you call. A 5 falls on the turn. The raiser bets, the other players fold. Right now, there are a total of 18 small bets in the pot (8 preflop, 8 flop, 2 turn- remember a big bet is equivalent to two small bets). What should you do? You are probably beat. However, if you call on the turn and the river, you will invest a total of 4 small bets. If you call to the river, there will be a total of 24 small bets in the pot, so you must win this pot 1/6 or more of the time in order for a call down to be appropriate. Assuming you have 5 outs (which is not the case if he has KQ or AK but let's just assume), you have a 12% chance of drawing out. So, you roughly have a 1/8 chance of winning because you draw out. In this case, you only need to be roughly 4% confident that you have him beat (1/6-1/8). This is very small indeed! So When to Fold? Two major decisions to be made at Limit Hold'em. The first is preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn. The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; this is a decision that can be made almost entirely based on pot odds. The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing 2 big bets, equivalent to 4 small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested 3 bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown. The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beat.