How to play poker

Bluffing 

Poker hands can be won even when you don't have the best hand by bluffing your opponents. 

Bluffing typically entails betting in a way that suggests your hand is stronger than it actually is, displaying confidence in your hand, and hoping that your opponents will believe you and fold rather than take you on in the showdown. 

Forced Bets

Most forms of poker require some form of compulsory bet at the beginning of a hand usually referred to as the ‘ante’ or ‘blind’. Many forms of the game feature a small blind and a big blind, with the latter generally twice the size of the former.

The Dealer

The job of the dealer controls the sequence in which the blinds are raised and players place their bets whether you're playing physical poker at home, a  casino, or at an online casino. Typically, the dealer is first and the game proceeds clockwise from there. 

Betting options

Following the forced bets, the first round of betting begins. Players usually have the following betting options to use depending on their confidence in their hand.

• Call — Matching another player’s bet or raise
• Raise — Increasing the size of your existing bet in the same round of betting
• Fold — To withdraw from the hand, sacrificing any bets already made.
• Check — Until the first bet in a round of betting is placed, players can choose to check (decline to make a bet while reserving the right to bet later in the round).
• All in — When a player doesn’t have enough chips left to call a bet they can play all their remaining chips. Subsequent betting takes place in a side pot and the all-in player can only win the amount of chips in the pot when they went all-in in any subsequent showdown.

ROUNDS OF BETTING

Depending on your confidence in your hand and your assessment of the strength of your opponents' hands, each round of betting in poker gives you the opportunity to choose one of the betting alternatives described in the preceding section. To determine the latter, it is mostly necessary to see how much they are betting or rising. Every poker variation has at least one round of betting, and the majority have at least two.  These rounds typically occur before and after game events, like the dealing of the flop in Texas Hold' em, and they provide players a chance to strategize to varying degrees as the hand develops. 'Community card' games like Texas Hold' em and Omaha allow for up to four rounds of betting.

Betting structure/limits

There are various different ways in which betting can be structured in poker. The three structures below are the most common in online poker and are usually listed alongside the type of poker in online poker lobbies. 

Pot limit (PL) — A player may bet or raise any amount up to the size of the total pot.

Fixed limit (FL) — Betting and raising must be done by fixed amounts.

No limit (NL) — A player can bet all of their chips any time it’s their turn to bet

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