Expert Texas Holdem Poker

  
Expert Texas Holdem Poker Average ratng: 3,7/5 127 votes

Good to Know Before MIT 15.S50 Begins

Best Texas Hold'em Poker Sites There are countless online poker rooms available, with the majority offering Texas Hold'em as their primary game type. While your experience will vary, the most reputable sites will always meet a certain standard. The poker sites we recommend will always meet a high criteria so you can play with confidence.

Poker / Texas Hold’em Rules

Expert Texas Hold'em Poker

The top 10 most frequently asked questions about Texas holdem poker with detailed answers from an expert player and writer. Play poker offline against a world class computer opponent. It is free of charge and without commercials with unlimited amount of free play chips. PokerAlfie is No Limit Texas Holdem AI-Player and his playing strength challenges top poker players. PokerAlfie is very competitive against good real-money players.

Obviously, you should know the ranking of the poker hands, and how cards are dealt in texas hold’em. Know the terms straight flush, four-of-a-kind (or quads), full house (or boat), flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two-pair, pair, high card; know preflop, postflop, flop, turn, river.

247 Expert Texas Holdem BEST ONLINE CASINO GAMES – texas holdem poker 247 We offer more than 300 exciting game options across all game varieties, including online slots, online video poker, online blackjack, and online roulette. There are only 7 poker hands you need to know to start playing No Limit Texas Holdem. Our Texas Hold'em Strategy page will give you some basic advice on how not to lose all your chips on the first day. Pick from FREE Texas Holdem Download for PC, FREE Texas Holdem Download for Windows, FREE Texas Holdem Download for Android, Texas Hold'em.

Betting Rules

  • You should know how betting in poker works. Understand the terms bet, raise, call, check, fold, and all-in. Check-raising means checking and then later raising in the same betting round.
  • Know what a blind is. There will be a small blind and a big blind each hand.
  • Know that preflop, the big blind is last to act. On each postflop betting round, the small blind is first to act, and the dealer is last to act. Know when a betting round ends (eg. if all players check, then the betting round ends).
  • Other good terms to know for positions are cutoff (right of the dealer), hijack (right of the cutoff), under-the-gun (the person left of the big blind; first to act preflop).

Mathematical Concepts

In class we will run through an example to illustrate the terminology you should know.

  • Suppose the pot has $500 in it, and your opponent bets another $250.
  • You may call his $250, in which case cards are flipped over:
    • If your cards beat his, you win the whole pot of $500 + $250 (that he just put in) + $250 (that you just put in) = $1000. You profited $750 from this gamble.
    • If his cards beat yours, you get $0 back. You lost $250 from this gamble.
  • Or, you can fold, resulting in a payoff of $0.
  • In this example, we say that you are getting 3-to-1 odds to call. When you win, you profit 3 times what you risk losing.
  • Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 10%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.1(+750)+0.9(-250)=-150. By calling, you expect to lose $150 in the long run. Your expectation for folding is always $0. Therefore, you should fold, since your expectation for calling is negative.
  • Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 50%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.5(+750)+0.5(-250)=250. By calling, you expect to earn $250 in the long run. Therefore, you should call, since your expectation for calling is positive. If you were to play this game a large number of times, your average payoff per game would be $250, with 100% certainty. This is called the Law of Large Numbers.
  • We say that a gamble has high variance if it takes a large number of trials to converge to the expected average payoff per game. A gamble has low variance if it converges quickly. In general, high variance means high risk, and high risk usually means higher reward, ie. higher expectation.
Expert Texas Holdem Poker

Book Recommendations

Miller, Ed, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Small Stakes Holdem: Winning Big With Expert Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685327. Only for limit hold’em, but still one of the classic books in poker and written by mathematicians.

Slightly outdated, but very good:

  • Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685334.
  • Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame. Two Plus Two, 2005. ISBN: 978-1880685358.

Rodman, Blair, Lee Nelson, Steven Heston, and Phil Hllmuth, Jr. Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396314.

Nelson, Lee, Tyson Steib, Steven Heston, Joe Hachem, and Bertrand Grospellier. Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-Go's. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396307.

More entertaining than educational:
Hansen, Gus. Every Hand Revealed. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2008. ISBN: 978-0818407277. [Preview with Google Books]

Not that practical, but theoretically very interesting:
Chen, Bill and Jerrod Ankenman. The Mathematics of Poker. Conjelco, 2006. ISBN: 978-1886070257.

Expert Texas Holdem Poker

Nazarewicz, Pawel. Building a Bankroll. Pawel Nazarewicz, 2012. ISBN: 978-0615589886. Mostly for full ring cash games.

Welcome!

This is one of over 2,400 courses on OCW. Explore materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.

MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.

Expert Poker Tips Texas Holdem

No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.

Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.

Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)

Poker King Texas Holdem

Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare