A new player at a card room usually knows one thing: that a flush beats a straight. What trips them up is everything around it - who posts the blinds, when they may raise, which cards they are allowed to use. This rule book covers each game dealt on the site and the two big community-card games you will meet everywhere else.
The common ground comes first. Every game here uses the same hand rankings, with the two exceptions noted on their pages. Every betting round offers the same choices - check, bet, call, raise or fold - and the glossary explains any word the rules take for granted. After that, each game is a set of differences, and the pages below list them.
What every poker game shares
Strip away the variant names and four things stay the same wherever the cards are dealt. First, forced money starts the pot. Hold'em and Omaha use two blinds posted by the players to the left of the button; Stud uses an ante from everyone plus a bring-in; the house games use your own Ante against the dealer. Without that starting money nobody would have a reason to bet, and the whole game would be folding.
Second, betting happens in rounds, and in every round each player has the same menu: check if nobody has bet, otherwise fold, call or raise. The round ends when everyone still in has put in the same amount. Third, the betting structure caps the size of a bet: fixed amounts in limit games, the size of the pot in pot-limit, your whole stack in no-limit. The structure changes the feel of a game more than the cards do, which is why pot-limit Omaha and no-limit Hold'em can seem like different sports.
Fourth, the showdown settles it. If more than one player is left after the last round, hands are shown and the best five-card combination wins, using the ranking on the hand rankings chart. Equal hands split the pot, and suits never break a tie in standard poker.
Choosing your first game
| Game | Cards you hold | Usual betting | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Hold'em | 2 hole cards + 5 shared | No-limit | Everyone: the game you will meet most |
| Omaha | 4 hole cards, use exactly 2 | Pot-limit | Hold'em players who want bigger draws |
| Three Card Poker | 3 cards against the dealer | Fixed Ante and Play | A quick house game with one decision |
| Video poker | 5 cards, one draw | Fixed coin bet | Learning hand values without opponents |
If you have never played, start with Hold'em: most of the vocabulary in poker books, films and forums assumes it. Players who already know Hold'em usually find Omaha the natural second step, with one warning printed in bold on its page: a four-card hand looks stronger than it is. The house games are the fastest way to get comfortable with the rankings, because the only opponent is a fixed rule.
Whichever you pick, learn it at one table format before switching. Cash games keep the blinds fixed and let you leave at any time, so they suit practice; tournaments add rising blinds and a prize ladder, which reward different decisions once stacks get short. The rules of the hand are identical in both, but the right play is not, and mixing the two in your first week makes it hard to tell a rules mistake from a strategy one.
How to learn a new poker game quickly
Read the rules once, then play twenty hands before reading them again. The second read is where the rules stick, because by then you have a hand in mind for every sentence. Keep the printable cheat sheets beside you for the first session, and do not worry about strategy until the mechanics are automatic: a player still counting which cards they may use has no attention left for the opponents.
Then move to the questions that decide money in the long run - which hands to play from which seat, and what a call is worth. The starting hands chart and the poker odds guide take over from there.