BOOK 2 · BACK OF THE BOOK
Poker Refresher
Everything you need to sit down at the table: how a hand unfolds, your choices on every street, and the ten poker hands, mostly in the words of the HoldemRobots.AI lesson pages. If you already play, skip it. If it's been a while, it takes five minutes.
The Basics of Poker
A deck of cards contains 52 cards, Texas Holdem uses a single deck for each hand.
The goal of Texas Holdem is to have the best 5-card poker hand at the end of betting.
How a hand unfolds
Every hand moves through the same steps, called streets. The heads-up table shows them across the top: Preflop, Flop, Turn, River, Showdown.
| Preflop | Flop | Turn | River | Showdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 cards each, yours alone | 3 shared cards | a 4th shared card | a 5th shared card | best 5 cards win |
- The blinds. Before any cards come out, two players put in forced bets called the small blind and the big blind, so there is always something to play for. The blinds move one seat each hand.
- Preflop. Each player gets two cards face down. Only you see yours. Then comes the first round of betting.
- The flop. Three shared cards are dealt face up in the middle. Everyone can use them. Second round of betting.
- The turn. A fourth shared card. Third round of betting.
- The river. The fifth and last shared card. Last round of betting.
- Showdown. Everyone still in shows their cards. Each player makes the best five-card hand from their own two cards and the five shared cards, any combination. The best hand wins the pot.
Most hands never reach showdown. If everyone else folds, the last player left wins the pot without showing a card.
Your choices
When it's your turn, you have the same few choices on every street. The hand journal's circles use the first letter of each.
| CHOICE | WHAT IT MEANS | WHEN YOU CAN |
|---|---|---|
| Fold (F) | Give up the hand. You lose whatever you've already put in, and nothing more. | Any time it's your turn. |
| Check (K) | Stay in without putting in more chips. | Only when nobody has bet yet this round. |
| Call (C) | Put in enough to match the current bet and stay in. | When someone has bet. |
| Bet or Raise (R) | Put in more. A bet is the first chips of a round; a raise makes an earlier bet bigger. Everyone else must then call, raise again or fold. | Any time it's your turn, if you have chips. |
Putting in every chip you have is going all-in. And one rule of thumb is worth remembering from the start: never fold when you can check for free. Checking costs nothing, so folding there just throws the hand away. In the backroom tournament, one AI seat tried that 160 times; the table turned each one into a check.
Basic Poker Hands
| 01 | 10♠ J♠ Q♠ K♠ A♠ | Royal Flush is the best hand possible in Texas Holdem |
| 02 | 6♥ 7♥ 8♥ 9♥ 10♥ | Straight Flush is the next best hand |
| 03 | 7♠ 7♥ 7♣ 7♦ 8♥ | Four of a kind is the next best hand |
| 04 | 7♠ 7♥ 7♣ 8♦ 8♥ | Full House is the next best hand |
| 05 | 2♣ 5♣ 7♣ 10♣ K♣ | Flush is the next best hand |
| 06 | 6♠ 7♥ 8♦ 9♥ 10♣ | Straight is the next best hand |
| 07 | 7♠ 7♥ 7♣ 8♦ K♠ | Three of a kind is the next best hand |
| 08 | 6♥ 6♠ 8♦ 10♣ 10♥ | Two Pair is the next best hand |
| 09 | 7♠ 7♥ 9♣ 3♠ 8♦ | One Pair is the next best hand |
| 10 | A♥ 7♦ 9♠ 3♣ 8♥ | Highest card is the next best hand |
In each category of hand, there are better and worse hands. My Flush may beat your Flush.
Two Cards Only
Each player starts with Two Cards Only. If they play the full hand, they will get 5 more community cards they can use to build the best 5 card hand.
Your two cards and what is possible
Each player must decide the best hand they can build with their two cards and balance it against what they believe the best possible hand the table can make.
Hold them or Fold them?
Your two cards will tell you which hands are possible. You will have some information on the number of competitors staying or folding. Combine that information with your knowledge of your competitors and you can decide to Hold them or Fold them
The text on this page is from two HoldemRobots.AI lesson pages, "The Basics of Poker" (holdcards33.html) and "Two Cards Only" (holdcards44.html), kept word for word. Two sections, "How a hand unfolds" and "Your choices," were written for the book. The example cards follow the colours on those pages; their suits were redrawn for the book.