The rules of Texas Hold'em in 5 minutes

Texas Hold’em is the most played poker variant in the world, and the rules fit on a single page. What takes years is playing them well — that’s what the rest of the course is for.

The goal

Make the best 5-card hand by combining your 2 hole cards with the 5 community cards on the table… or get every opponent to fold before you get there. That second path wins more pots than you’d think: in poker you don’t need the best hand, you need to make better decisions than your opponent.

The shape of a hand

1. Blinds. Before the deal, the two players to the left of the button post forced bets: the small blind (SB) and the big blind (BB). They exist so there’s something to fight for.
2. Preflop. Each player gets 2 face-down cards. Starting with the player to the left of the BB, everyone decides: fold, call, or raise.
3. Flop. Three community cards come face up. New betting round, this time starting with the first player to the left of the button. Now you can also check (pass) if nobody has bet.
4. Turn. Fourth community card. Another betting round.
5. River. Fifth and final card. Last betting round.
6. Showdown. If two or more players remain, cards go face up and the best 5-card hand wins. When players are in for different amounts, the side pot rules split what each one could actually win.

The actions, precisely

• Fold: you give up the hand and whatever you’d already put in the pot. It’s the good player’s most frequent action.
• Check: you pass without betting (only if nobody bet earlier in the round).
• Call: you match the current bet.
• Bet / Raise: you bet or raise. In No-Limit you can bet anything from the minimum (the big blind, or the size of the last raise) up to all your chips (all-in).

What this course will teach you

The rules tell you what you can do; strategy tells you what you should do. The next two free lessons cover the hand ranking and the positions — the bare-minimum vocabulary. From there, the Fundamentals course gets into what separates a winning player: which hands to play from each position, how to defend the blinds, and how to use the math of the pot so every call and every fold pays off over the long run.

Practice now: the daily quiz drops 3 real decisions on you every day, free.