How to play Texas Hold'em

Texas Hold'em is one of the most popular card games ever, and it's really easy to understand. A poker hand is always made of five cards. In the beginning of the game you only get two cards, which you can later combine with community cards dealt later during the game. The game has four rounds where you can either bet or throw your cards away. The first round is called Preflop round. This is where you get your two cards. Before the cards are dealt, two players must post a blind bet - as they haven't seen their cards yet. There is a small bet, followed by the Big Blind, that is usually doubles the value of the small blind. These bets are posted by the two players sitting on the left of the dealer.
The betting goes round the table clockwise. In order to mark who's dealing, a special chip is placed in front of the current dealer. If it's your turn, make your bet and place your chips in the pot. Anyone who wants to play on, must pay your bet. If anyone decides it would be too expensive, they can fold.
Betting all of your chips is called going all-in. Once you are all-in, you can't bet anything more, but also cannot fold before the showdown. In this case you will automatically be in the hand until its end, giving you the possibility to win by showing the best cards.
You can also raise a bet, making it more expensive. If the other players don't want to pay extra, they must fold. You may call the bet of someone who has one in front of you. For this you must pay whatever the price of the bet was. If no-one has bet yet, then you can check, meaning that you don't place any bet and let the next player act.
The action goes round the table clockwise. After everyone has acted, all the bets are collected and placed in the middle of the table in the pot. After the initial round of betting the dealer deals three community cards. Every player can use these to create their 5-card poker hand.
In the second round of betting you can place additional money in the pot, or fold. A fourth community card - called the turn - is dealt on the table. You can also use this in combination with the other cards to form your poker hand.
The players who are still in the game, engage in a third round of betting, at the end of which the bets are collected and placed in the pot again. After the turn comes the fifth community card, called River. again you can combine this with the other community cards.
This is followed by the fourth round of betting where you can bet once more. After this round, the players who are still in, show their cards to find out who has the best holdings and wins the pot.
Texas Hold'em is easy to understadn but can present some very complex situations, which is why inexperienced players often lose very quickly.

A Beginners Guide to Stud Poker

Stud Poker is a variant of poker, where each player gets a mix of face-down and face-up cards. The cards are dealt in multiple betting rounds.

Anyone who wants to examine this poker variant must have a basic understanding of general poker rules and betting limits before starting to play Stud Poker. One can play no limit as well as pot limit games in the stud poker.

In Stud Poker, the player who bets first on each round, may change from round to round. It is usually the player whose face-up cards make the best hand for the game being played. The cards dealt face down to each individual player are called hole cards.

Betting proceeds after that in normal clockwise order.The number of betting rounds in a game influences how well the game plays with different betting structures.

Games with four or fewer betting rounds, such as five-card stud and Mississippi stud, play well with any structure, and are especially well suited to no limit and pot limit play. Games with more betting rounds are more suited to fixed limit or spread limit.

In the subsequent rounds, the rule changes and the person with the maximum value cards start betting. Later betting rounds usually have higher limits than earlier ones.

Another common rule is to allow the larger bet on the second round if there is an open pair, meaning at least one player's upcards make a pair. Some casinos, especially in the United States use the smaller limit on the first three rounds rather than just the first two.

It is quite common in stud poker to name the betting rounds after the number of cards each player holds when that betting round begins. Following this logic, the bet that occurs when each player has three cards is called "third street" or "third card", and so on, for example the bet that occurs when each player has five cards is "fifth street". The final round is always called "river" or simply"end", regardless of the number of the previous betting rounds.

Stud poker itself has countless variants, the most popular ones include 3, 5, 6 and 7-card stud, London lowball, Mississippi, Mexican, Blind, Chicago, Dr Pepper, Cowpie, Auction and many more.