Texas Hold’em 101: Practice Games
- In This Quick Guide:
- Example One
- Example Two
- Example Three
Practice makes perfect when it comes to playing poker, and especially learning the tricks of Texas Hold’em! In this guide we’ll go through a couple of sample games to help you get your game up to speed. You can just read along, but it wouldn’t hurt to get out a deck of cards and deal them out to match the example. It’s like learning to speak a foreign language—the more realistic you can make it, the faster it’ll sink in.
Example One
Hold’em can be played with as few as two players, in which case we say they’re playing head-up or heads-up, to as many as 10, which we call a ring game. To keep things simple for our example, we’ll have just four players: Larry, Moe, Joe, and Sally. This is sometimes called a shorthanded game, as compared to a ring game.
Preflop
Sally had the dealer button for the hand before, so now it slides over to Larry. It’s a $3/$6 limit game, so Moe posts a little blind of $1, and Joe posts a big blind of $3. Now the players get their cards.
Remember that before the flop, it’s not the big and little blind who act first, but the player who is to their immediate left—the player under the gun. In this case, it’s Sally. She loves her Ace-King combo. It’s a powerful hand, so she raises, putting forward $6 in chips.
Larry takes one look at the dreck he’s been dealt and mucks it, pushing the cards face down toward the dealer. He’ll rarely win a pot with Q8 offsuit (unsuited), so he’s better off just watching.
Moe and Joe have decent hands, however, so they both call the raise. Moe puts in $5 in addition to his $1 blind, and Joe puts in $3.
Flop
Stop! Before you read on, stop and look at the table, then work out for yourself what each active player now holds for his or her best five-card poker hand.
Ready? Let’s resume the action.
Moe, the little blind, is excited: he’s flopped what in Hold’em parlance is called a set—three-of-a-kind, with two of the three cards being his hole cards. This is a very powerful hand, so Moe unhesitatingly bets the limit of $3.
Joe, the big blind, likes his hand, too, so he calls the bet. He’s flopped second pair, meaning the second-best possible pair hand, with his pair of Jacks. In addition, he has a flush draw—either of the two cards to come can give him a flush in Hearts. Stop and work it out if you don’t see it.
Meanwhile, Sally has flopped a pair of Aces. Her second-best card is the King from her hole cards. If someone else had also flopped a pair of Aces, but held a smaller kicker, Sally would likely be winning because of her King. In any case, Sally likes her top pair so much that she raises, making the bet $6.
With his powerful set, Moe could reraise, but he knows that in this structured-limit game, the bet size doubles on the next card. He decides to set a trap for Sally by just calling.
Turn
Again, stop and look at the table and work out the players’ best five-card hands for yourself, now that they each have six cards to work with. Moe’s hand hasn’t gotten any better, but it hasn’t gotten any worse: it’s still quite strong. But strangely, he checks. Joe’s hand has improved: he still has his flush draw, but the Ten on the turn gives him two pair, Jacks and Tens. He bets $6. Sally is worried that her top pair might not be the best hand anymore, but she calls anyway. The action is back to Moe, and now he springs his trap. He raises! Both Joe and Sally are forced to call his check-raise so they can continue.
River
What does everyone have now? Sally doesn’t hold back. She bets $6. Moe raises, still confident, and Joe gives up and folds. Sally reraises and Moe realizes his hand may not be best after all and just calls.
When the smoke clears, Sally has the best possible hand with her Ace-high straight, Moe has the second-best hand with his set of Sevens, and Joe was smart to fold his third-best hand of Jacks and Tens. Sally takes down a $108 pot.
Example Two
There’s no betting this time—just read the boards and the hole cards as shown in the tables, then figure out each player’s best five-card poker hand and the ultimate winner.
Joe is the lowest hand, with only his pair of Aces in the hole. Sally easily beats Joe with a full house, Kings full of Tens; but Larry beats Sally just as easily with quads, or four-of-a-kind. Larry in turn loses to the winner, Moe, for whom the river card made a King-high straight flush.
Remember that in Hold’em, you can use one, both, or none of your hole cards in combination with the board. In this case, Moe needed only the J of spades in his hand to make the winner.
Example Three
Here, Joe flopped top pair with his Ace, and his Queen gave him a good kicker, or side card. But Joe’s hand never improves, and he winds up with the worst hand of the four.
Sally makes a set of Fours on the turn, but fails to improve to either a full house or quads on the river, either of which would probably have won. Her hand beats Joe’s, but isn’t the winner.
Moe flops a Five-high straight, and probably feels he should win, but he has the bad luck to get counterfeited when cards fall on the turn and the river that match his hand but don’t improve it. These cards give Larry a Six-high straight using the Six in his hand, making him the winner.
The more you practice, the quicker you will become a Texas Hold’em master! (Don’t forget to practice your poker face, too.) If you need more help with the basics of the game, be sure to check out our Quick Guide, How to Play Texas Hold’em. Have fun!
From The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Texas Hold'em by Randy Burgess and Carl Baldassarre
