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Texas Hold Em Basics

The way to learn a card game like Texas Hold Em is to familiarize yourself with the basics of the game. Since Texas Hold Em is now the world’s popular game, learning it will enable you to play poker anywhere.

The first thing you should know about Texas Hold Em or a serious poker game is that there are no wild cards. The jokers are taken out of the deck at the beginning of the game. This makes the game more fun, more challenging and more frustrating especially for new players.

Texas Hold Em is a community card game which means that five of the seven cards dealt are community cards. Anybody can use them to make a straight Flush or pair. This makes the game a lot more fun and introduces a real element of chance to the play.

New cards are dealt each hand and players have a chance to discard or hold what they have. The players say how many cards they want. Then they bet on the hand before moving onto the next hand. Since Texas Hold Em is a variation of Seven Card Stud you get six chances to bid. Players have a choice of betting or folding during each hand. The player with the best hand at the end of the game wins. There are two ways to win in Texas Hold Em; you can either cause every other player to fold or you can have a show down in which person with the highest hand wins.

The highest hand possible in Texas Hold Em is the Royal Flush, Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of the same suite. It’s called the Royal Flush because it contains all of the face cards. Just below the Royal Flush is the straight Flush which is Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of different suites. These two hands are high because they are hard to get. You can play hundreds of hours of Hold Em and never see either of these hands.

Right below the Straight Flush is four of a kind which is statistically a very hard hand to get. This hand beats anything but the Royal Flush or the Straight Flush. Below that are three of a kind and two of kind. Naturally the higher the cards that make up the pair or three of a kind the higher the hand.

A good thing about Texas Hold Em is that it is stud poker so it’s similar to the game that most of us are familiar with. A great way to familiarize yourself with Texas Hold Em is to watch it played on TV. Another good way to learn about Texas Hold Em is to play it online.

One thing to remember is don’t bet big or play aggressively until you’ve mastered the basics of Texas Hold Em.

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