Many people have watched Texas Holdem tournaments on television and it looks easy to play. However before you race down to the casino and sign up for a high stakes tournament you need to learn the basics of the game and get some playing experience in low limit games. The matches you see on television are No Limit Texas Hold’em games. That means that at any time a player can bet all of his chips. This is a great format for tournaments but as a beginning player you will want to first learn to play Limit Texas Hold’em. Limit games have structured betting rounds and you are limited to the amount of money you can bet during each round. More precisely you will want to play Low Limit Texas Hold’em as you learn the game. Some of the low limit games you will find in the cardroom are have a betting structure of $2/4, $3/6 $4/8. After you gain experience you can move up the higher limits or No Limit if you desire, but you must learn to walk before you can run. Let me explain the game and then give you some winning tips to get started.
Texas Hold’em is a deceptively simple game to learn but a harder game to master. Each player is dealt two personal cards and then five community cards are turned up on the board. You make the best five card hand using any combination of the seven cards. For this example we will use a low limit structure of $2/4. There are four betting rounds and the first two have a limit of $2 and the last two rounds have a limit of $4. You must bet or raise only the amount of the limit for that round.
However I hope that after you read this book, it will help you improve your game if you already play or get you started on the right track if you are just starting out. Learning to play winning Texas Hold’em requires reading and studying. If you read just one book about the game you will be ahead of about 80 percent of the other payers at the table. Spending the money for a good poker book is a lot cheaper than trying to get your education at the tables in a live game.
