Poker for beginners: Learning to play

Poker is one of the best known and most popular games in the world and rightly so. Poker is a relatively complex game, but with experience and good strategies, you can also skim a good score. Most of the time you play for a good amount of money or just for fun without money and every now and then people even play for the clothes.

Poker has been popular with people for many years. This is probably because this game is not actually difficult to understand. However, other factors like stage fright, poker face and sophisticated strategies make the game even more exciting and difficult. You should have a good nervous system to keep up. As a beginner you often fear defeat or embarrassment. Especially at the beginning the multitude of cards and chips can confuse you. But if you inform yourself well before the first game, study the cards and the meanings, then not much stands in the way of luck.

In this article you will learn what you should pay special attention to when playing poker as a beginner in order not to risk your entire possessions. The rules of the game are described and a few strategies for beginners are discussed.

The rules of the game

There are many different types of poker and for several reasons Hold’em is both the best known and most popular poker game today. Basically, the poker game rules are not very difficult to learn. Whether it’s a poker strategy for tournaments, a poker strategy for cash games or the basic rules of poker. The goal of this game is to have the best poker hand and thereby skillfully win as many chips as possible based on the stakes. Or you win by leaving the game as the winner, moving all opponents to surrender the current hand. Each player gets 2 cards at the beginning, which can only be seen by themselves. In the course of the game, a maximum of five cards are revealed. The cards that are dealt face up are called the river. These cards are decisive for each player. Depending on what you have in your hand, you try to combine the best combination with the cards in the river. Betting and also playing is done with so-called chips. These are placed in the middle during the game, which is called a pot.

The course of the game: One of the players is always the dealer. This position is always marked with a special dealer button in a poker game. It rotates clockwise with each game. In the first round, however, the dealer must be determined. The dealer can be determined by high carding. Each player is dealt one card clockwise from the deck. The player with the highest hand then receives the dealer button. The two players to the left of the dealer must put the blinds in the pot before the cards are dealt. The blinds are the minimum stakes per round. The two cards the players receive are also called hole cards. The first betting round starts with the player to the left of the big blind. Now you can call or fold the round based on your own cards and the size of the blinds. After the first round, 3 cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table. These first 3 community cards in the river are called “flops”. The second betting round then starts with the first remaining player to the left of the dealer button.

And immediately afterwards the next community card (turn) is issued. This is followed by the third betting round, which starts with the first player to the left of the dealer button. Then the last and fifth community card, the river card, is placed on the table. Then the fourth and last betting round starts, which is the final betting round.

This means that while a hand is being played, there are up to 4 betting rounds. In each of these rounds, the player can bet any amount. This amount must then be held by each player at the table who wishes to remain in this round. It is always the turn of the players to move clockwise. A betting round is completed successfully when all players have bet the same amount or only one player is active at the end.

How to play poker is explained briefly below

Check: If nobody has bet in the round, a player can check. This means that you do not bet, but the cards remain in your hand. If, however, a player still bets afterwards, then you have to call that bet afterwards in order to really stay in the game.

Call: If a certain amount was bet before a player, this bet can easily be settled and the hand secured. This procedure is called calling.

Bet: If no other player has placed a bet before you, you can do it yourself. Here the amount of the bet is completely irrelevant. However, you cannot bet more than you have chips. Any player who wants to continue his hand must be able to hold the bet.

Raise: When it’s your turn, you can raise the bet at any time. Even if someone else has already raised, you can still raise. All players who want to stay in the round must at least pay the raise. The raise can be at any level. However, the minimum raise must be twice as high as the previous bet or raise. But be careful here. A raise by another player is not excluded.

Fold: If you can no longer keep up with the bets and/or the cards cannot be combined well with the river, you fold. This means you don’t have to bet any more chips. Conversely, there is no chance of winning the hand. Previously placed chips remain in the pot and are therefore lost.

The poker face

When playing poker you need good nerves and you shouldn’t let on anything. The more experience you have in this game, the better your chances of winning. It’s a good idea to try out a few games online before playing a game with good opponents and, above all, real money. If you haven’t found a good online casino yet, you can find a list of the best and safest online casinos at https://www.betting.org/. Among them are also many providers who offer the game with virtual money. Thus the risk of loss is zero and the fun factor is still at the maximum.

In general, an aggressive gambling behavior in which one also takes a risk sometimes counts as advantageous. This is recommended, but only with good cards, unless you are a real bluffer. If you behave very calmly and don’t bet, you will quickly be exposed as a passive player. So you are psychologically inferior to the other players. But you shouldn’t call the bets every time. It’s worth showing patience and observing the other players well and studying their behaviour. This allows you to better assess whether you are bluffing or whether your opponent really has good cards.