Texas Holdem Rules For Beginners

Only starting out with poker in 2020?

I remember when I started with poker, I found remembering the important parts of the game challenging.

But your journey can become easier with this printable poker cheat sheet for beginners (I wish I had this when starting out!).

Table Of Contents

• How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example
• Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

Texas Hold ‘Em is the most popular variation of poker, and has the same hand hierarchy and basic rules as traditional poker, so it's great for beginners. Continuing our gaming series, there a few Texas Hold ‘Em poker pointers that can help you rake in winnings. Stay ahead of the game, be sure to read the other poker guides or view the basics of Texas hold ‘em poker video to recap. How to determine the winning hand in Texas Hold'em Another thing to keep in mind is that even with your one-pair hands, where most new players pay attention only to the pair, you need to be aware of the value of your total.

Poker Cheat Sheet For Texas Holdem:

Download the high-quality Poker Cheat Sheet printable (PDF) version:

The cheat sheet includes hyperlinks for further reading on any material you may not yet know.

Click here for more information on pre-flop and post-flop. We also discuss Texas Holdem bet sizing in the highlighted link.

If you like the cheat sheet, you may also enjoy these these awesome starting hand charts from upswing poker. They are a more detailed version of the starting hands section in the cheat sheet above which supplement it nicely. Amazingly they have been downloaded almost 200,000 times!

How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.

Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited)

Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic.

Either:

Texas Holdem Rules For Beginners

• If first to raise (no other player has raised before you), follow the coloured schematic.
• If facing a raise or reraise, follow the numbered schematic.

Note: If playing on a 6max table (6 players as opposed to 9), the yellow coloured hands will also be able to be played from any position.

See the image below for the numbered and colour schematic.

Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop.

How to play poker preflop is a tough subject to cover in detail. There are many factors you need to take into account such as:

• Your position and your opponents position.
• Your opponents likely holdings
• Board texture
• Previous history

A brief explanation of why position is powerful and why we play fewer hands when there are more players left to act (still with a hand):

When playing on a fullring table, you will have to contend with nine players, who each have a chance of picking up a big hand. Therefore, when playing a full ring game, you will play fewer hands. You can read more on this concept at fullring vs. 6max.

The difference in player numbers is also why we play a wide range of hands from the Button, but very few hands from UTG (first position). When opening the Button, we only have two players left to act (unlikely for them to have a strong hand), whereas when playing from UTG in a full ring game, eight other players could potentially pick up a big hand.

For more in-depth details on this see Texas Holdem Strategy and Position is King!

Step 4: Take home some cash

Hopefully, this poker cheat sheet will help you ‘bring home the bacon' as they say, but there is always something more to learn in poker. Keep reading for some more cheat sheets which might be of use to you.

Get Your Miniature (Credit Card Sized) Texas Holdem Starting Hands Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet only contains the most vital information you need so it can handily fit in your pocket. The legends have also been squeezed onto the hand chart in front of hands we always fold.

To download printable PDF which is scaled to credit card size, use the Facebook unlock button:

Poker Odds Cheat Sheet (for Texas Hold'em)

Get your pot odds cheat sheet below. You can use this to determine the number of outs required to continue based on the pot odds you are being offered. You can also use it to convert between percentages, required outs and ratios for all kinds of situations in poker. The pot odds cheat sheet is explained in more detail below:

Click here to get a high-quality printable pdf version of the Poker Odds Cheat Sheet.

When your opponent bets you will be offered odds based on the size of his bet. For example, if your opponent bets half pot you will be offered odds of 3:1 on a call (call 1 to win 3). Essentially, it is your risk to reward ratio.

Pot odds will tell you whether is it correct for you to call or fold based on what size our opponent bet and how many cards that will improve our hand.

If you are interested in the learning poker math, check out our best poker books recommendation page here for some awesome books on poker math.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example

1. Work out pot odds

In this hand, our opponent bets $26 into a $41.5 pot making the total pot size $67.5. This gives us odds of 67.5: 26 (67.5 = 41.5+26). Or approximately 2.6:1. You can also see how to convert this into a percentage in our article pot odds.

2. Find 2.6:1 on the card (or as close to it as possible).

Texas Hold'em For Beginners

We locate 2.6:1 on the chart tells us that 2.6:1 translates to 30.11% pot equity. In other words:

• if we win 30% of the time, we will break even,
• if we win > 30% of the time we will make a profit on average in this situation
• if we win <30% of the time, we will make a loss on average in this situation

3. Determine our actual equity

This is the tough part, unfortunately.

You have to estimate how often you are beaten by your opponent in order to determine if you can profitably call or not. To do this you can use a program such as equilab to plug in hands that you think your opponent may have and the hand that you currently hold. To learn more about estimating what your opponent may be holding see the article poker hand range: the comprehensive beginner guide. From the example above, we plug in some hands we think our opponent may have and see that we have 34% equity:

4. Determine if we can profitably call.

Since our equity is greater than our pot odds, we can profitably call the river bet. If our equity were less than the pot odds being offered, we would have to fold as we cannot c call.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example

Let's take a similar situation (confronted with a bet), except this time we are on the flop with KQs, and we have a flush draw with nine outs. A King and Queen which could be considered outs, but they aren't clean outs. This means even if we hit our hand we still may not win (say for example our opponent has AA).

1. Work out equity percentage:

Since we have nine clean outs, we can simply go to the number 9 on the card and then determine our equity.

This means that we need a minimum pot odds of 1.9:1 or 38% when we have nine outs on the flop with two cards still to come.

3. Compare pot odds to odds given by bettor.

Our equity is 38%, so we need pot odds of less than 38%. The lower the pot odds, the more profitable the call.

Our pot odds are 12.5/33 which is 37%, and hence we just about have the pot odds to call. However, we are also in positon (and will act last with more information) and have two overcards to the board (both a King and Queen will make top pair good kicker). So this is an easy call.

4. Further reading

We need seven outs to continue, and we have nine outs with a flush draw. See calculating outs for more details.

For more information on how to use this poker cheat sheet see poker and pot odds.

This video will also be useful to you:

Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

In case you aren't familiar with the hand strengths, and hand rankings of poker check out the printout Texas Holdem hands cheat sheet:

(You may also be interested in the rules of texas hold em)

There are a few important things to remember when memorising at the poker hand rankings:

Best Five Cards Win

In poker, it is always the best five cards wins. This means it is not only the pairs that matter if there is no clear winner (nobody has a pair), the decision will go down to high card wins.

Kickers

Kickers decide the winning hand when two opponents have the same pair or three of a kind. For example, if one opponent has AQ (ace-queen) and another has AJ, the opponent with AQ would win on an A7522 board as he has the five card hand of AAQ75 whereas the second opponent has AAJ75.

Split Pots

Split pots occur when opponents have the same hand. For example, imagine one opponent has A4 and the other A3 on AQ752 board. Both opponents would have five card hand of AAQ75. Neither the 4 or 3 would play.

You can get more information about hand rankings on our web page here.

If you are more visually inclined, check out this video on poker hand rankings:

For more on Texas Hold'em strategy, see poker 101.

Make sure you check out the fan favourite posts:

Texas Holdem Rules For Dummies

Common poker mistakes & Texas Holdem Poker Tips

Good luck at the poker tables with your new poker cheat sheet!

Rules Of Texas Holdem Poker For Beginners

Texas Holdem is the most popular variant of poker and the one we recommend beginners start with. Once you have a good understanding of Texas Holdem, other poker variants are quite similar and will be easier to learn.

The object of Texas Hold em poker is to create the best five-card hand using seven available cards. Each player is dealt 2 cards which only they can see and use. There are then 5 cards dealt to the middle of the table which are community cards which everybody can see and use.

Dealer Button

Once the game starts an imaginary dealer is assigned. Obviously with online poker the computer does all the dealing automatically but this nominal dealer is important as it indicates who posts the compulsory bets (known as blinds) before each hand and it also indicates who is first to act in each betting round.

The current dealer is indicated by a disc marked with a 'D' known as the dealer button. At the end of each hand the dealer button moves along to the next player to the left of the current dealer and continues to move clockwise after each hand is finished.

The Blinds

In Texas Holdem there are two compulsory bets that are made before the start of each hand. These are known as the 'Small blind' and the 'Big blind' and ensures that there are chips to be won in every hand.

The player to the immediate left of the dealer places the small blind and the player to the left of the small blind posts the big blind.

In No Limit games the size of the blinds is set by the stakes of the table you are at. So for example at a $1 / $2 table the small blind would be $1 and the big blind would be $2.

Before The Flop – First Betting Round

Once the blinds have been posted, two cards are dealt face down to each player at the table, these are known as 'hole cards'. Only the individual player can see these cards.

At this point the first betting round begins and each player must make a decision on how to act based on the strength of their hole cards. They have the following options:

1. Fold – Throw the cards away and not play in this hand
2. Call – Call the size of the big blind or highest bet if another player has raised, and take part in the hand
3. Raise – Make a larger bet than the current bet (or big blind). Any other player who wants to continue would then have to call your increased bet in order to carry on. A raise must be at least an increase the size of the Big Blind so the minimum raise would be 2 times the big blind amount. In No Limit there is no maximum to your raise, It can be your whole stack if you wish.

Action always goes clockwise on a table. On the first betting round, the first person to act is the player to the left of the big blind. Each player acts in turn until all the players have acted at the table, and the amount put into the pot by each player remaining in the hand is equal.

The Flop – Second Betting Round

After the first betting round has finished, the dealer places 3 cards face up in the middle of the table – this is known as the 'Flop'. The cards in the middle of the table are called 'Community Cards' as they are shared by all the players towards making their final hands.

Players can now see 5 cards (2 hole cards + 3 community cards) out of the 7 cards to come and should have good idea of how their hand is developing. At this point the second betting round begins.

In this and all subsequent betting rounds, the action starts with the first player remaining in the hand to the left of the dealer. This player can either:

1. Check – not bet anything
2. Bet – place a bet which the other players must at least call to continue in the hand. The minimum bet is the size of the big blind.

If everyone checks then this betting round ends with no-one betting. As soon as someone bets then the other players can either:

1. Fold – drop out the hand
2. Call – call the bet that has been made
3. Raise – increase the bet that has been made which the other players must then call to continue in the hand.

As in the previous betting round, the plays continues clockwise around the table until all players have called, checked or folded and the amount placed in the pot by each player still in the hand is equal.

The Turn

After the second betting round, the dealer places a 4th community card, face up on the table – this is called the 'Turn card', it is sometimes also referred to as 'Fourth Street'.

After the Turn there is a third betting round, which operates in exactly the same way as the previous betting round.

The River

After the third betting round, the dealer places the 5th and final community card face up on the table – this is called the 'River card'.

After the River the fourth and final betting round takes place in the same way as the previous round.

The Showdown

After the final round of betting, each player still left in the hand can use any combination of the 2 hole cards in their hands and the 5 community cards on the table to produce the best 5 card hand.

The player with the highest ranking hand wins the pot. If two or more players have the same value hand then the pot is split between them equally.

If you have not already learnt which hand is better than another then please look at our Poker Hand Ranking Guide.

Next Hand

Once the hand has finished and the pot has been awarded to the winning player, the game moves onto the next hand.

The dealer button moves to the next player on the left of the current dealer, the cards are shuffled, the blinds are posted by the next two players and the cards are dealt again.

The cheat sheet includes hyperlinks for further reading on any material you may not yet know.

Click here for more information on pre-flop and post-flop. We also discuss Texas Holdem bet sizing in the highlighted link.

If you like the cheat sheet, you may also enjoy these these awesome starting hand charts from upswing poker. They are a more detailed version of the starting hands section in the cheat sheet above which supplement it nicely. Amazingly they have been downloaded almost 200,000 times!

How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.

Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited)

Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic.

Either:

Texas Holdem Rules For Beginners

• If first to raise (no other player has raised before you), follow the coloured schematic.
• If facing a raise or reraise, follow the numbered schematic.

Note: If playing on a 6max table (6 players as opposed to 9), the yellow coloured hands will also be able to be played from any position.

See the image below for the numbered and colour schematic.

Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop.

How to play poker preflop is a tough subject to cover in detail. There are many factors you need to take into account such as:

• Your position and your opponents position.
• Your opponents likely holdings
• Board texture
• Previous history

A brief explanation of why position is powerful and why we play fewer hands when there are more players left to act (still with a hand):

When playing on a fullring table, you will have to contend with nine players, who each have a chance of picking up a big hand. Therefore, when playing a full ring game, you will play fewer hands. You can read more on this concept at fullring vs. 6max.

The difference in player numbers is also why we play a wide range of hands from the Button, but very few hands from UTG (first position). When opening the Button, we only have two players left to act (unlikely for them to have a strong hand), whereas when playing from UTG in a full ring game, eight other players could potentially pick up a big hand.

For more in-depth details on this see Texas Holdem Strategy and Position is King!

Step 4: Take home some cash

Hopefully, this poker cheat sheet will help you ‘bring home the bacon' as they say, but there is always something more to learn in poker. Keep reading for some more cheat sheets which might be of use to you.

Get Your Miniature (Credit Card Sized) Texas Holdem Starting Hands Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet only contains the most vital information you need so it can handily fit in your pocket. The legends have also been squeezed onto the hand chart in front of hands we always fold.

To download printable PDF which is scaled to credit card size, use the Facebook unlock button:

Poker Odds Cheat Sheet (for Texas Hold'em)

Get your pot odds cheat sheet below. You can use this to determine the number of outs required to continue based on the pot odds you are being offered. You can also use it to convert between percentages, required outs and ratios for all kinds of situations in poker. The pot odds cheat sheet is explained in more detail below:

Click here to get a high-quality printable pdf version of the Poker Odds Cheat Sheet.

When your opponent bets you will be offered odds based on the size of his bet. For example, if your opponent bets half pot you will be offered odds of 3:1 on a call (call 1 to win 3). Essentially, it is your risk to reward ratio.

Pot odds will tell you whether is it correct for you to call or fold based on what size our opponent bet and how many cards that will improve our hand.

If you are interested in the learning poker math, check out our best poker books recommendation page here for some awesome books on poker math.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example

1. Work out pot odds

In this hand, our opponent bets $26 into a $41.5 pot making the total pot size $67.5. This gives us odds of 67.5: 26 (67.5 = 41.5+26). Or approximately 2.6:1. You can also see how to convert this into a percentage in our article pot odds.

2. Find 2.6:1 on the card (or as close to it as possible).

Texas Hold'em For Beginners

We locate 2.6:1 on the chart tells us that 2.6:1 translates to 30.11% pot equity. In other words:

• if we win 30% of the time, we will break even,
• if we win > 30% of the time we will make a profit on average in this situation
• if we win <30% of the time, we will make a loss on average in this situation

3. Determine our actual equity

This is the tough part, unfortunately.

You have to estimate how often you are beaten by your opponent in order to determine if you can profitably call or not. To do this you can use a program such as equilab to plug in hands that you think your opponent may have and the hand that you currently hold. To learn more about estimating what your opponent may be holding see the article poker hand range: the comprehensive beginner guide. From the example above, we plug in some hands we think our opponent may have and see that we have 34% equity:

4. Determine if we can profitably call.

Since our equity is greater than our pot odds, we can profitably call the river bet. If our equity were less than the pot odds being offered, we would have to fold as we cannot c call.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example

Let's take a similar situation (confronted with a bet), except this time we are on the flop with KQs, and we have a flush draw with nine outs. A King and Queen which could be considered outs, but they aren't clean outs. This means even if we hit our hand we still may not win (say for example our opponent has AA).

1. Work out equity percentage:

Since we have nine clean outs, we can simply go to the number 9 on the card and then determine our equity.

This means that we need a minimum pot odds of 1.9:1 or 38% when we have nine outs on the flop with two cards still to come.

3. Compare pot odds to odds given by bettor.

Our equity is 38%, so we need pot odds of less than 38%. The lower the pot odds, the more profitable the call.

Our pot odds are 12.5/33 which is 37%, and hence we just about have the pot odds to call. However, we are also in positon (and will act last with more information) and have two overcards to the board (both a King and Queen will make top pair good kicker). So this is an easy call.

4. Further reading

We need seven outs to continue, and we have nine outs with a flush draw. See calculating outs for more details.

For more information on how to use this poker cheat sheet see poker and pot odds.

This video will also be useful to you:

Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

In case you aren't familiar with the hand strengths, and hand rankings of poker check out the printout Texas Holdem hands cheat sheet:

(You may also be interested in the rules of texas hold em)

There are a few important things to remember when memorising at the poker hand rankings:

Best Five Cards Win

In poker, it is always the best five cards wins. This means it is not only the pairs that matter if there is no clear winner (nobody has a pair), the decision will go down to high card wins.

Kickers

Kickers decide the winning hand when two opponents have the same pair or three of a kind. For example, if one opponent has AQ (ace-queen) and another has AJ, the opponent with AQ would win on an A7522 board as he has the five card hand of AAQ75 whereas the second opponent has AAJ75.

Split Pots

Split pots occur when opponents have the same hand. For example, imagine one opponent has A4 and the other A3 on AQ752 board. Both opponents would have five card hand of AAQ75. Neither the 4 or 3 would play.

You can get more information about hand rankings on our web page here.

If you are more visually inclined, check out this video on poker hand rankings:

For more on Texas Hold'em strategy, see poker 101.

Make sure you check out the fan favourite posts:

Texas Holdem Rules For Dummies

Common poker mistakes & Texas Holdem Poker Tips

Good luck at the poker tables with your new poker cheat sheet!

Rules Of Texas Holdem Poker For Beginners

Texas Holdem is the most popular variant of poker and the one we recommend beginners start with. Once you have a good understanding of Texas Holdem, other poker variants are quite similar and will be easier to learn.

The object of Texas Hold em poker is to create the best five-card hand using seven available cards. Each player is dealt 2 cards which only they can see and use. There are then 5 cards dealt to the middle of the table which are community cards which everybody can see and use.

Dealer Button

Once the game starts an imaginary dealer is assigned. Obviously with online poker the computer does all the dealing automatically but this nominal dealer is important as it indicates who posts the compulsory bets (known as blinds) before each hand and it also indicates who is first to act in each betting round.

The current dealer is indicated by a disc marked with a 'D' known as the dealer button. At the end of each hand the dealer button moves along to the next player to the left of the current dealer and continues to move clockwise after each hand is finished.

The Blinds

In Texas Holdem there are two compulsory bets that are made before the start of each hand. These are known as the 'Small blind' and the 'Big blind' and ensures that there are chips to be won in every hand.

The player to the immediate left of the dealer places the small blind and the player to the left of the small blind posts the big blind.

In No Limit games the size of the blinds is set by the stakes of the table you are at. So for example at a $1 / $2 table the small blind would be $1 and the big blind would be $2.

Before The Flop – First Betting Round

Once the blinds have been posted, two cards are dealt face down to each player at the table, these are known as 'hole cards'. Only the individual player can see these cards.

At this point the first betting round begins and each player must make a decision on how to act based on the strength of their hole cards. They have the following options:

1. Fold – Throw the cards away and not play in this hand
2. Call – Call the size of the big blind or highest bet if another player has raised, and take part in the hand
3. Raise – Make a larger bet than the current bet (or big blind). Any other player who wants to continue would then have to call your increased bet in order to carry on. A raise must be at least an increase the size of the Big Blind so the minimum raise would be 2 times the big blind amount. In No Limit there is no maximum to your raise, It can be your whole stack if you wish.

Action always goes clockwise on a table. On the first betting round, the first person to act is the player to the left of the big blind. Each player acts in turn until all the players have acted at the table, and the amount put into the pot by each player remaining in the hand is equal.

The Flop – Second Betting Round

After the first betting round has finished, the dealer places 3 cards face up in the middle of the table – this is known as the 'Flop'. The cards in the middle of the table are called 'Community Cards' as they are shared by all the players towards making their final hands.

Players can now see 5 cards (2 hole cards + 3 community cards) out of the 7 cards to come and should have good idea of how their hand is developing. At this point the second betting round begins.

In this and all subsequent betting rounds, the action starts with the first player remaining in the hand to the left of the dealer. This player can either:

1. Check – not bet anything
2. Bet – place a bet which the other players must at least call to continue in the hand. The minimum bet is the size of the big blind.

If everyone checks then this betting round ends with no-one betting. As soon as someone bets then the other players can either:

1. Fold – drop out the hand
2. Call – call the bet that has been made
3. Raise – increase the bet that has been made which the other players must then call to continue in the hand.

As in the previous betting round, the plays continues clockwise around the table until all players have called, checked or folded and the amount placed in the pot by each player still in the hand is equal.

The Turn

After the second betting round, the dealer places a 4th community card, face up on the table – this is called the 'Turn card', it is sometimes also referred to as 'Fourth Street'.

After the Turn there is a third betting round, which operates in exactly the same way as the previous betting round.

The River

After the third betting round, the dealer places the 5th and final community card face up on the table – this is called the 'River card'.

After the River the fourth and final betting round takes place in the same way as the previous round.

The Showdown

After the final round of betting, each player still left in the hand can use any combination of the 2 hole cards in their hands and the 5 community cards on the table to produce the best 5 card hand.

The player with the highest ranking hand wins the pot. If two or more players have the same value hand then the pot is split between them equally.

If you have not already learnt which hand is better than another then please look at our Poker Hand Ranking Guide.

Next Hand

Once the hand has finished and the pot has been awarded to the winning player, the game moves onto the next hand.

The dealer button moves to the next player on the left of the current dealer, the cards are shuffled, the blinds are posted by the next two players and the cards are dealt again.

Where to Play Texas Holdem?

We recommend 888 Poker for a great place to play Texas Holdem. To find out more about them see our 888 Poker Review or to see alternate rooms to play Texas Holdem then see the Professor's reviews in our Poker Reviews section.