Poker Rules Continued - Texas Hold Em’
As covered in our previous article ‘How to Play Poker - Texas Hold ‘em - Poker Made Simple’, the objective of texas hold em’ is for a player to use the cards available to them to for the highest ranking five card hand, or convey their hand strength to opponents.
A quick recap of poker hand rankings is visualised below. If you would like a pdf download of a ‘poker cheat sheet’
The hierarchy of the hand ranking chart is straight forward, a high card is beaten by a pair and a pair is beaten by two pair. A two pair is then beaten by a three of a kind and so on.
The specific distinction between the winnings hands begin when hands of equal title face off against each other. For example a single pair against another player’s single pair. A pair of two’s is the weakest pair and a pair of Ace’s is the strongest. Naturally the highest ranking pair is the winning hand. However, things become a little more complicated when two equal pairs face off against each other.
This is where the key principle of ‘the best five card hand’ comes into play.
As pictured, both players have an Ace in their hand, which pairs with the Ace on the board. The player on the left’s full five card hand is the pair of aces followed by three high cards, the queen, jack and the ten in their hand.
The player on the right’s full hand is the paired ace, with three high cards, queen, jack and a nine.
As the player on the left’s ten ranks higher than the highest available card to the the player on the right (the nine on the board)
The logic applies the same to each level ‘matching rank’ hand. Let’s review another example:
Both player 1 and player 2 have a three of a kind from the three 4’s on the board. However, we see their best five card hand below.
The ace in player 1’s hole cards is used to form a higher five card hand than player 2. In this example we actually see that player 2’s hole cards aren’t involved at all in forming their best five card hand.
Split Pots
In some circumstances players will form the exact same ‘best five card hand’.
In this situation, there is a tie and we have a split pot. This means that the pot or chips in the middle are divided equally between the players in the hand.
An example of this is pictured below.
As we can see, the best hand available to both players is the one on the board. A three of a kind with an ace and queen high card to follow. Neither player can create a higher five card hand with their hole cards. Therefore they must split the pot.
Time Limits
There are two formats of texas hold em’, the tournament style game and cash games.
A cash game is when the chips physically represent cash. More specifically, when a player is not involved in a live hand, they may elect to leave the game and exchange their chips for cash. In some cash games, particularly friendly ones outside of casinos mandate a full ‘orbit’ before you may leave the table. This means that if you were the position of dealer, you would voice your wish to leave the table. You must then wait for the dealer button to do a full orbit around the table and back to you before you can leave.
In contrast, a tournament structure is more akin to an all or nothing competition. Whereby your chips do not have direct conversion to cash, instead players will continue the game until they are eliminated (have no chips left), or accumulate all the chips and win the tournament. Tournaments have varying structures with respect to speed. This is partly where time limits come into play.
The key element in defining the duration of a poker game is the blind structure. This is where the tournament designer selects what the small and big blind will be at each stage of the tournament.
For example, the table below shows four blind levels with varying time limits. With each new level the blind are increased, raising the stakes of each hand. The duration of each level determines the pace of the game.
If you wanted a tournament to last longer you could lengthen the duration of each level. Conversely, if you wish to have a more rapid paced game you would shorten the duration of each level.
Another consideration in relation to time limits, is the time taken for a player’s individual decision within a hand. Some players when faced with a tough decision may take an excessively long time to announce their action. This process of taking a long period of time to make a decision is commonly referred to as ‘tanking’. To maintain the pace of the game, some tournaments and cash games institute an ‘action clock’, which when exercised gives the player a limited amount of time to act(usually between 15-30 seconds) before their hand is automatically folded.
Side Pots
Often a confusing topic for beginner poker players is the rules around ‘side pots’. This is when, a player goes all-in and a player in the same hand elects to raise the bet beyond the value of the previous player’s all-in. If someone is to call the second player’s raise / all-in, a side pot must be created, as the original all in player cannot receive the additional chips committed to the pot that exceed that within their own stack.
This can be hard to understand initially so we will go through a visual example.
Okay in the hand above let’s assume position 1,2 and 3 ar the only players in the hand. Player 1 has decided to go all-in with their chip stack of $100. For the sake of simplicity imagine there is nothing in the pot prior and this now brings our pot to a total of $100. Player 2 decides they don’t want to compete with two people in this pot so they raise to $300 in an attempt to get player 3 to fold.
Player 3 is not dissuaded by this raise and calls their $300 and a side pot has to be formed. As player 1 only had a $100 to begin with, player 2 and 3 contribute $100 to the main pot and the remaining $200 from the raise go to the side pot.
After this, the river peels off a queen and both the small and big blind check through to the showdown. As player 1 has all their chips in the main pot, they have no decision to face.
Again for simplicity, imagine player 1 has the best hand with pocket queens and they win the main pot. However, as they only had $100 to put into the main pot, they cannot win the side pot.
The winner of the side pot defers to the best hand between player 2 and 3. Let’s imagine player 2 has two aces in their hand and player 3 has a king and a nine, making player 2 the winner of the side pot.
The key principle of the side pot is that the original all-in’s are not eligible to compete for the money added above their original all-in.
Let’s consider a different outcome, where player 1 has the worst hand of the three. Inherently, they are immediately ineligible for the side pot and are also disqualified from the main pot as they have the worst hand. Both the side and main pot belong to the highest ranking hand between player 2 and 3.