Learning How to play Texas Hold'em Poker Part 9
This was published 11-07-2010This is Learning How to play Texas Hold’em Poker Part 9, the ninth part of our series of blogs on how to learn Texas Hold’em. To take full advantage of these articles, it’s recommended that you read them in sequence.
How to evaluate your hands
The aim of Texas Hold’em Poker is to form the best possible hand by using any combo of your 2 cards & the 5 community cards that you will find on the table.
You can choose whether you want to use none, one, or both of your own Texas Hold’em cards to form your best hand. Let’s look at some rules that can help you learn how to evaluate the best possible poker hand:
• There is a specific poker hand ranking order. This order is always the same and there are no exceptions. For example, 3 of a kind always beats two of a pair and a flush will always beat a straight.
• Poker hands must consist of exactly 5 cards, and those five cards only.
• When 2 players have the same hand, it means that the pot will be split between them. The rest of the cards and what the other players have (which is not such great hands) means nothing. Only the best 5-card hand will be taken into consideration.
• If the rest of the players have nothing to contend these hands the winning hand is the one with the single card of the highest-value:
o A of clubs, 3 of hearts, 4 of diamonds, 6 of spades & 7 of spades trumps K of spades, Q of spades, J of clubs, 9 of clubs & 8 of diamonds
o A of clubs, J of hearts, 9 of spades, 8 of diamonds & 6 of hearts trumps A of hearts, J of clubs, 9 of diamonds, 8 of clubs & 2 of spades
• Suits do not determine the strength of a poker hand.
Once the winning hand is determined, that player wins the pot. The person to the left of the dealer now gets the dealer button and the 2 players who is now to the left of the dealer button will have to put out their big & small blinds.
To be continued in Learning How to play Texas Hold’em Poker Part 10, which will be published on this site next week.
