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Texas Hold’em Basics

Learn hole cards, betting rounds and five-card hands through a worked example, then use BluffKing practice tables and hand review to study your decisions.

Learn by playing: open Texas Hold’em in your browser, no download needed.

Play Texas Hold’em

A Texas Hold’em hand ends in one of two ways: everyone else folds and you take the pot, or the remaining players reach showdown and compare their best five-card hands. BluffKing uses practice chips with no monetary value, so you can start by learning the order of play and the hand rankings.

How one hand plays out

  1. Under ordinary rules, the small and big blinds post their required chips, each player receives two hole cards, and the first betting round begins.
  2. Flop: three community cards at once, then a betting round.
  3. Turn: a fourth community card, then a betting round.
  4. River: the fifth community card; after the final betting round, players who have not folded show down.

On your turn you can fold, call or raise, and when no bet needs matching you can check. Calling matches the amount you still owe and raising increases the price for others to continue; read the amount needed to call rather than mistaking the whole pot for it.

Compare your best five cards

From strongest to weakest: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. Choose your best five from your two hole cards and the five community cards, using two, one or neither hole card; suits do not break ties. Example: you hold A♠ Q♠ on A♥ 7♦ 7♣ 2♠ 3♥, so your best hand is A♠ A♥ 7♦ 7♣ Q♠, aces and sevens with a queen kicker; an opponent with A♦ J♣ has the same two pair with a jack kicker, so you win.

Watch three things as a beginner

  • Position: who has already checked, bet, raised or folded? Acting later gives you more information but does not guarantee a win.
  • The board: could someone have a straight, a flush or a paired-board hand? Your hand’s strength changes as cards arrive.
  • The price: compare the call with the pot; chips you put in earlier are not a reason you must keep calling.

To practise, open a 2–9-seat friend room and share its code, or choose AI opponents; name your hand and the call amount before every action, replay each hand afterwards, and take one uncertain decision to the equity and pot-odds tools.

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