All About Real Money Texas Hold'em

No gambling game is more quintessentially American than real money Texas hold'em. The combination of skill, luck, boldness, and psychology make this game a perfect microcosm of capitalist culture. Free Texas hold'em games are available, too, but they don't make nearly as much sense as playing for real cash.

This page provides some recommendations about where to play for real money online, along with a tutorial for how to play and some strategy advice. It also includes sections about the different types of Texas hold'em you can play (yes, there are multiple variations), and the pros and cons of playing for real money.

How Texas Hold'em is Played

Texas hold'em is one of a family of card games that use "community cards". When you learned to play poker, you probably played five card draw at the kitchen table. In that game, and in stud games, you're dealt a hand, and that's the hand you play.

But in a community card poker game, you have some cards in your hand, and you share some cards with your opponents. The cards that are shared with the other players at the table are the eponymous "community cards".

In Texas hold'em, each player gets two cards in her hand (these are known as hole cards). Then there's a round of betting. Then three more cards are dealt in the middle of the table (the flop). These are the first community cards. After the flop is another round of betting, which is followed by another community card (the turn). After another round of betting, a final community card (the river) is dealt. Then there's a final betting round.

As in all poker games, players have the option of betting, checking, calling, folding, or raising during the betting rounds. If a player folds, she loses all claim to the pot at the showdown, but she also doesn't have to contribute any money to the pot.

At the showdown (after all the betting rounds), the player with the best five card hand—using any combination of community cards and cards in her hand—wins the pot. In the event of a tie, the pot is split between the winning players.

One of the other major differences between Texas hold'em and other poker games (besides the community cards) is the way forced bets are handled. In all poker games, some type of forced bet stimulates action. If everyone had the option of dropping out if they didn't like their hand, you wouldn't have a game, because everyone would just fold until they had a stellar starting hand.

In most poker games, these forced bets are made every single hand by every single player. This forced bet is called an ante.

But in Texas hold'em, the forced bet is placed in the form of a pair of rotating bets called "blinds". There's usually a small blind and a big blind. The size of the big blind is usually roughly twice the size of the small blind. The big blind is also usually roughly half the size of the maximum bet.

Finally, a note about betting limits. During the first two betting rounds (the hole cards and the flop), the bet size is half that of the bets in the next two betting rounds (the turn and the river). When people talk about a $2/$5 Texas hold'em game, they're talking about a game where the bets are made in increments of $2 during the first 2 rounds and $5 during the final 2 rounds.

Standard poker hand rankings are used to determine winners in Texas hold'em. You'll almost never see wild cards used in a Texas hold'em games, although in some wilder home poker games, wild cards aren't that uncommon.

Types of Texas Hold'em

Like most gambling games, you can subcategorize Texas hold'em games by type. The differences in gameplay are minor in the case of Texas hold'em, though. The first types to considered here are categorized according to bet sizes. These are as follows.

• Limit
• Pot Limit
• No Limit

The next types of Texas hold'em are categorized by playing style (for lack of a better word). These are as follows.

• Ring Games
• Tournaments

By varying the number of hole cards involved, you can create games which COULD be considered variations of Texas hold'em, but which are probably more properly defined as different poker games in their own right.

A prominent example is "Omaha", which isn't actually a variation of Texas hold'em at all, even though it's a "hold'em" game. In Omaha, each player gets four hole cards instead of two. The rest of the game plays the same, with one more exception—players have to use two (and exactly two) cards from their hand and three (and exactly three) cards from the board to create their final hands.

Omaha is also often played hi-lo style, which means that the qualifying low hand splits the pot with the winning hand. This changes strategy dramatically.

Pineapple hold'em is another variation. In Pineapple, players get three hole cards instead of two. It's played in one of two ways. In the first variation, players get to discard one of their three hole cards before the betting starts. That's the traditional way to play Pineapple hold'em.

A second variation, called "Crazy Pineapple", allows each player to keep their three cards until the turn. After betting on the flop, the players decide which of their three hole cards to discard.

A third variation, called "Lazy Pineapple", allows you to keep all three cards until after all the action is finished. This variation is also sometimes called "Tahoe Pineapple".

"Super hold'em" is a variation similar to Pineapple, but instead of having to throw away one of your three hole cards, you get to keep all of them and create a final hand using six cards.

"Double Flop hold'em" is another fun variant that's gaining popularity. Instead of a single flop being dealt, two flops are dealt. You get to choose which flop you're going to use to create your final hand.

Free Texas Hold'em VS Real Money Texas Hold'em

As kids, we used to play free poker all the time. Just playing for chips, or toothpicks, or matches, was our version of the "free money play" that's now so common on the Internet. Then, as now, playing free Texas hold'em is a great way to learn how the game works, when to act, and so forth.

Money isn't just the root of all evil. (That's a misquote, anyway, actually—it's "the love of money" that's the root of all evil.) Money is the root of Texas hold'em. Without money on the line, the game doesn't matter.

One of the best books about poker we've ever read was called Poker Night, and it was written by John Vorhaus. In it, he explains how to play various home poker games. But he has an interesting essay about deciding what stakes to play for. He explains a concept called the "gulp limit".

The theory is that poker only starts getting interesting when you play for stakes that actually matter to you. If you don't care about the money on the line because the amount is so low, you make different decisions than you would otherwise. And the other players make different kinds of decisions, too.

Vorhaus suggests that you play for enough money that if you were to lose your entire stack, you'd be forced to swallow hard, even though the amount of money shouldn't be enough to interfere with your ability to pay your rent or utilities. That's your gulp limit.

That's such a great concept that we've applied it to all kinds of gambling that we do. Gambling means risking something of value in exchange for the opportunity to win something of value. If a penny is meaningless to you, then playing penny ante poker is a waste of time. You might as well be spending your time playing solitaire or Minecraft.

Free Texas hold'em does offer one significant advantage over Texas hold'em played for real money. It's impossible to lose money when you're playing for free.

And, of course, if you live in most of the United States, online poker is (at best) a legally gray area. Almost all of the real money poker operators have left the United States market because of the government's actions against PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. The cardrooms that still take action from U.S. players are smaller and don't offer a lot of action. Transferring money to and from these cardrooms is inconvenient and expensive at best, although for some hardcore rounders, it's worth it.

In a handful of states, like New Jersey and Delaware, online poker has been legalized, but it's heavily regulated, and you're only allowed to play with real money players who are physically located in the state. Again, this leaves you with a limited number of choices about where to get your real money poker action.

For years, poker sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker operated "free" versions of their sites at the .net version of their domains. That was just an attempt by their marketing departments to get players to their sites. A percentage of the players at these free games would eventually switch to the real money games.

The best bet for players who want to play Texas hold'em in the United States now is probably ClubWPT, which is only marginally free. It's a subscription based site where you pay a monthly subscription fee in order to play. Your chips aren't worth real money at this site—they're just a means of keeping up with how many points you've earned on the site.

We have at least one friend who used to play poker professionally who's active on this site. He loves it because the players are so terrible, and it's a great example of how the money flows to the skilled players.

Another option for free Texas hold'em in the United States is to find a bar that's hosting free Texas hold'em tournaments as part of the Amateur Poker League or some comparable organization. These game usually offer a nominal cash prize of $50 or something for their winners. They cost nothing to enter.

Surprisingly, you can find some excellent players at these free bar-hosted poker tournaments. At the same time, some of the other players are so awful that it's painful to watch them ever win a hand.

Our best advice regarding free Texas hold'em is to use it as a set of training wheels to get you used to the game and its action in order to prepare for your eventual real money career.

Online Poker Sites

Not everyone reading this page hails from the United States. That being the case, players from other countries have a lot of options when it comes to playing Texas hold'em for real cash on the Internet. We look at some of the better options for these players below.

United States players have fewer options, but here is some information about sites that still accept real money players from this region.

An Introduction to Hold'em Strategy

If you're going to play Texas hold'em for real money, you should (at the very least) learn enough about the strategy behind the game to break even. That's not as easy as you might think, either, because of something called "the rake".

Poker rooms, online and off, make their money by taking a percentage (usually about 5%) of each pot over a certain amount. That amount is called "the rake", and it pays for the dealers and other associated costs of running a poker room.

Look at it this way—if you're playing poker with 10 players who are all equally as skilled as you are, then over time, you'd expect to be able to break even. You'd win as many pots of roughly the same size as the other players—at least in the long run.

But if 5% of those pots is being taken by the host, you're going to lose 5% of your money over and over again in the long run.

What's the bottom line?

You have to be a little bit better than the other players just to break even, because you have to win 5% more money just in order to break even.

The first strategic consideration that most players take into account when playing Texas hold'em is how to decide whether or not to even get into a hand in the first place. You might think that the first two cards are a minor consideration when compared with the five cards yet to be dealt, but that's not the case at all.

Think about it as if you were racing horses. If you only bet on horses which had a head start, you'd be betting at a huge advantage over the other bettors, wouldn't you?

If you take the same attitude toward your starting hands in Texas hold'em, you'll see similar results. You want to get your money into the pot when you have an edge over your opponents.

You'll find multiple ways of thinking about starting hands in Texas hold'em, but one of the easiest is to think of them in terms of what kinds of hands are playable. As a general rule, the following types of hands are the only playable starting hands in Texas hold'em.

The other consideration when deciding on a starting hand is what position you act in. If you're relatively late to act, you have more information about what the opponents might be holding.

Here's an example.

You're dealt an ace and a 2 of spades. You're the first person to act. You bet. The player behinds you raises, the player behind her raises too, and the fourth player to act ALSO raises.

One of those three players almost certainly has a better hand than you in this situation, so your best course of action in this situation is probably to fold. But had you folded because you were out of position, you could have saved yourself a bet.

On the other hand, if you had that same hand and were the last person to act, and four other players limped in on this hand, you'd have great pot odds to call. If two or three of those players had raised, you'd be confident that your hand wasn't good enough, and you could fold with confidence.

And when you do limp in that situation, you have the opportunity to hit your hand. But since you're last to act, you also get to see whether or not the players before you seem strong. If they miss the flop, they might check it to you, in which case you might be able to pick up the pot even if you didn't hit the flop by just making another bet.

Position is an important consideration in all the rounds of play, but especially preflop. The later you act, the better your hand is. The earlier you act, the worse your hand is.

You should probably only be playing the best 15% to 20% of the hands you get preflop.

Beginners should follow an old-time Texas hold'em poker maxim:

"Fit or fold."

That means if the flop doesn't fit your hole cards, you should fold rather than continue to put money into the pot.

What do we mean when we say "fit"?

We mean that the flop improves your hand.

Here's a couple of examples.

You can think about your playing style in a couple of ways. One of these is how selective you are about which hands you play. The other is how often you bet or raise as opposed to checking or calling.

The first of these is a measure of how tight or loose you are. Tight players stick to good hands and fold a lot. Loose players play a lot of hands and seldom fold. In general, it's better to be a tight player than a loose player.

The second of these is a measure of how aggressive you are. Players who bet and raise a lot are considered aggressive. Players who check and call a lot are considered passive. In general, it's better to be aggressive than passive.

The best of all possible combinations of these traits is "tight aggressive". You don't play a lot of hands, but when you do, you put pressure on your opponents by betting and raising against them. They have to decide whether or not to keep playing, so you'll pick up some pots just because they fold in the face of your aggression. And when they do call your bets and raises, you'll often have the cards to beat them.

Loose aggressive players often do well, too, especially in pot limit and no limit games. They constantly put pressure on their opponents to fold. The small pots they pick up over and over again help them to pay for the times when they get beat. Loose aggressive players are often called maniacs.

A tight passive player is called a rock. He loses his money, but he loses it slowly. He also rarely gets action when he does bet or raise, because the other players recognize that if he's betting or raising, he must have the nuts.

Loose passive players are the best players to face, because they put a lot of money in the pot and seldom have the cards to win. These players are called calling stations. Whatever you do, don't be a calling station.

Many players can improve their play by focusing on becoming more tight aggressive. It's a simple approach. Just start folding more often, and when you are in a hand, raise or bet. In fact, if you want to be a tight aggressive player, remember the following maxim:

"If it's not good enough to raise with, it's not good enough to call with, either."

That alone will improve your game dramatically.

Most beginner Texas hold'em players overestimate the importance of bluffing dramatically. The reality is that many winning players, especially at the lower stakes, rarely (if ever) bluff.

One of the most important considerations when deciding whether or not to bluff is how many opponents you're facing. If a lot of players are in the hand, you have to successfully bluff all of them. Most of the time, if you're facing three or more opponents, you shouldn't bluff.

The other consideration is the playing tendency of your opponent. You should have a general idea of how often your opponent will fold to your bluff, which means paying attention to the other players' styles. A calling station might be impossible to bluff.

Semi-bluffing is almost always a better choice than bluffing. A semi-bluff is when you bet or raise with a hand that's probably second-best, but also a hand that has a chance at improving.

Here's an example of a semi-bluff.

You have a pair of 2s in the hole, the 2 of spades and the 2 of hearts. The flop comes AQ7 of hearts. You're probably beat on the flop, but you have 2 cards to come.

Your opponent is likely to have a pair of aces or queens at this point. But it's a scary board, because he might think you hit your flush right out of the gate. Even though he probably has a better hand than you do, you might be able to win it by betting into him here. And even if he calls, you still have a shot of hitting a 2 or another heart on the turn and/or the river, in which case you might be able to beat his pair of aces or queens.

You get a chance of winning the pot if your opponent folds. But you also get a chance of winning the pot if you hit your hand. This is a much better situation than just hoping your opponent will fold.

Of course, entire books have been written about Texas hold'em strategy. It's a nuanced gamed with lots of considerations. Being good enough to break even is relatively easy, especially at the lower stakes.