How to play
No-limit Texas Hold’em, start to finish. This page is everything you need to sit down; the rest of the guide goes deeper on each part of it.
The goal
Make the best five-card hand — or make everyone else give up.
You get two private cards. Five more are dealt face up in the middle for everybody to share. Your hand is the best five cards you can make out of those seven, and you are free to use both of your own, one, or neither.
Chips go in across four rounds of betting. Win by holding the best hand when the cards are turned over, or by betting enough that everyone else folds — in which case nobody ever finds out what you had.
Best five: A-K-Q-J-10, a straight. The two hearts on the board are a flush draw that never came in.
How a hand runs
Four betting rounds, five shared cards.
- 1
Blinds
Two players are made to bet before anyone has seen a card: 25 from the small blind and 50 from the big blind. The dealer button moves one seat every hand, so the obligation goes round the table.
- 2
Preflop
Everyone is dealt two cards face down that only they can see. Betting starts to the left of the big blind, who acts last and may raise even if nobody else did.
- 3
Flop
Three shared cards land face up. Everyone still in the hand builds from these plus their own two. Betting starts again, this time with the option to check.
9♥♥7♠♠2♦♦ - 4
Turn
A fourth shared card, then another round of betting.
9♥♥7♠♠2♦♦J♣♣ - 5
River
The fifth and last shared card, and the final round of betting.
9♥♥7♠♠2♦♦J♣♣Q♥♥ - 6
Showdown
The remaining players show their cards and the best five-card hand takes the pot. Get there earlier — everyone else folding — and you win it without showing anything.
Your options
The table only ever offers what the rules allow, so a greyed-out button is not a bug.
- Fold
- Give up the hand. Anything you already put in stays in the pot.
- Check
- Stay in and pass the decision on, offered only when there is no bet in front of you.
- Call
- Match the current bet. If matching it takes your whole stack, the button says so — that is an all-in call.
- Bet
- Open the betting on a street nobody has bet yet. The minimum is the big blind, 50.
- Raise
- Put in more than the current bet. The slider shows the legal range; the percentage keys size it against the pot.
No limit means there is no ceiling on a bet: any raise can be for everything in front of you. Bet more than an opponent can cover and they can only call for what they have — the rest is set aside in a side pot they are not playing for. How the minimums and side pots work.
At this table
The specifics you are actually playing.
- Starting stack
- 2,000
- Opening blinds
- 25 / 50
- Table
- 1–5 bots, or 2–6 people
Stacks carry over from hand to hand, and the blinds double every 10 hands. That is what makes a table end: with the stakes fixed, a careful game can go round for ever, and the first player knocked out would be waiting on all of it. Rising blinds turn a comfortable forty big blinds into a handful, which forces the decisions that finish it.
The rest of the guide
Each part of the game, in as much detail as it needs.