The Basics of Poker

Poker is a card game where the goal is to have the best five-card hand possible (or to make other players think that you have the best hand, even if you don’t). It has a huge variety of variants and rules, but most share a few common threads.

The first step in learning poker is understanding the basics. There are a few important terms that will help you get started:

Blinds: The forced bets placed into the pot by 2 players to the left of the dealer before the cards are dealt. Typically these are small but can be any amount.

Flop: The 3rd community card that is dealt. This usually initiates another round of betting.

Pocket Kings/Queens: A pair of matching cards. A Straight: 5 consecutive cards of the same suit. Flush: 5 cards of the same suit, but can be a sequence or a sequence of unrelated cards.

Read the Player: Pay attention to how your opponents play. A lot of good poker reads come from patterns, not subtle physical poker “tells.” For example if a player is always raising when he plays then you can assume he has a pretty strong hand and is probably trying to deceive his opponent by raising with weak hands.

Position is Important – The player in the last position has more information about his opponents’ holdings and can often make better value bets. This is because he knows if the other players have already raised or folded so he can adjust his bet accordingly.