Texas Hold'em Rules and Hand Rankings for Beginners

The deal

Each player gets two private cards ("hole cards"). Five community cards are dealt face-up in the middle of the table across three stages: the flop (three cards at once), the turn (one card), and the river (one card). You build your best five-card hand using any combination of your two hole cards and the five community cards.

The betting rounds

There are four rounds of betting: before the flop (preflop), after the flop, after the turn, and after the river. Two forced bets called blinds — a small blind and a big blind — are posted before the deal to make sure there's always money in the pot to play for. On each betting round you can check (pass, if no one has bet), call (match the current bet), raise (increase it), or fold (give up the hand).

Hand rankings, strongest to weakest

Royal flush → Straight flush → Four of a kind → Full house → Flush → Straight → Three of a kind → Two pair → One pair → High card. This order is identical across essentially every poker variant, not just Hold'em — worth memorizing once.

What makes Hold'em different from playing "against the house"

Unlike blackjack or baccarat, you're not betting against the casino in Hold'em — you're betting against the other players at the table. The casino's revenue comes from a small fee called the rake, taken from each pot (or a flat time-based fee at higher-stakes tables), not from winning hands itself. This is the single biggest structural difference from every other game on this list: your opponent's skill level matters more than the house edge.

Reading a table before you sit

Cash game tables list a stakes range (e.g. $1/$2, meaning the blinds), and tournament structures list a buy-in and starting chip stack. Cash games let you leave anytime with whatever chips you have; tournaments end when one player has all the chips. If you're new, a low-stakes cash table is the more forgiving place to learn the betting rhythm before trying a tournament.

Minimum age to play is set by the venue (21+ in the US, 18+ in most of the UK and Asia). If gambling stops being entertainment for you, see our responsible gambling page.

Know the rules already? Go deeper with our Texas Hold'em starting hand strategy guide.