In this how to play poker for beginners lesson you will learn the basic rules and game processes of poker. The good news is they’re not as complex as you might have been led to believe.
To start it’s best that you restrict yourself to free online poker multi-table free Texas hold em freeroll tournaments. These games can have anywhere from 20 to 250 players at the start, and, more good news for you, the the quality of the competition you’ll come up against in these games is far from, shall we say, “elevated”; the vast majority of free online poker players exist in a world dominated by relatively average play.
So, to start, you login to your free online poker site and go join a game. As mentioned each of these tournaments will have multiple tables. You can divide the number of players by 10, and you’ll know how many tables are a part of the tournament. You round up to eliminate the decimal point, if any; e.g., 68 players divided by 10, equals 6.8, rounded up, means there are 7 poker88 tables in the tournament.
Now the online poker software of the site you play at will seat you at a randomly selected table and seat. On any decent free online poker site games start very regularly, maybe every half-hour; 24-7 so initially, don’t be overly concerned about how successful you are in any one game; there’s always another game that you can enter.
Who Wins and How?
Fundamentally, the winner of any 1 hand will be the player who has the best cards.
The outline of the game process is this:
- You get 2 cards dealt to you face down, that only you can see. This is followed by a round of “blind” betting; generally, no more than 3 raises to the original bet are permitted; and this restriction of raises will be true in all future rounds of betting.
- Next, the Dealer will expose 3 cards on the table. These are called community cards, and can be used by all of the players who are participating in the hand.
- At this point, another round of betting occurs.
- Then the Dealer will add another card to the community cards; there are now 4 cards that can be used by all of the players who remain in the hand.
- This is followed by another round of betting.
- Last, the Dealer will add a 5th card to the community cards. Again followed by another round of betting
Now lets look at this in more detail:
Your 2 face down cards are known as “Pocket Cards”. They are dealt out, one at a time, left to right, to everyone at the table. You only see your own pocket cards.
- The Dealer then exposes 3 “community cards” to all players on the table. This stage is known as “The Flop”.
- When he exposes the 4th “community card”, it’s known as “The Turn” (or, 4th Street).
- And, when he exposes the 5th “community card”, it’s known as “The River” (or, 5th Street).
- All 3 to 5 “community cards” that are exposed on the poker table at any one time are known as “The Board”.
Every player who is participating in the hand through the process of betting (if you “folded”, you’re no longer in the hand), attempts to make the best possible five-card hand.
- They can use any 5 of the 7 cards that are available to them; one, both, or none of their pocket cards, together with 3, 4, or 5 of the “community cards”.
- The player with the best 5 card hand wins all of the money that has been bet (The Pot).
The “Dealer Button” is involved in every hand to be played; one of the game’s participants gets the Dealer Button (DB); the selection of the player who first receives the DB is done by the free online poker software.