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Draw
Cards · Classics · plays in your browser, no download
Two cards that only you can see, five face up that everybody shares, and the best five of those seven. The shared cards are the whole invention: because most of the information is public, you can work out what your opponent might have — and he knows that you can.
Where it comes from
The official story is that hold’em was born in Robstown, Texas, in the early twentieth century. It is official in a literal sense: the Texas Legislature passed a resolution in 2007 saying so. It is also, as Britannica politely notes, a claim with very little historical evidence behind it.
What is better documented is how it got out of Texas. It reached Las Vegas in the sixties — sources say 1963 at the California Club, or 1967 with the arrival of the Texan players Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim and Crandell Addington — and for a while it was one table in one casino. In 1970 Benny and Jack Binion took over a gambling convention, renamed it the World Series of Poker and moved it to Binion’s Horseshoe. The following year the main event was played as hold’em, and after that nothing else was ever seriously in the running.
The reason it beat draw poker is structural. In draw, your opponent’s cards are entirely hidden, so there is very little to reason about and the game comes down to betting patterns. In hold’em five of the seven cards are on the table — everyone can see most of the hand, everyone can see what the board makes possible, and the interesting question becomes what somebody would have to be holding to bet like that. It is also, not coincidentally, the only version that makes any sense on television.
How to play
| Hole cards | Two each, face down. |
|---|---|
| The flop | Three cards face up in the middle, shared by everybody. |
| The turn | A fourth shared card. |
| The river | A fifth, and the last. |
| The hand | Your best five cards out of the seven. You may use both, one, or neither of your own. |
| Betting | A round after the deal and after each of the three stages. |
Hand rankings, worst to best: pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush.
Our version
Hold’em against the computer, with nothing at stake but the chips on the table. No money goes in and none comes out.
Three things that help
Play fewer hands than you want to. The commonest mistake in poker, at every level, is seeing too many flops. Most of what you are dealt should be folded before anything else happens.
Position is worth more than cards. Acting last in a betting round means you have seen what everybody else did. The same two cards are worth playing late and worth folding early.
Read the board, not your hand. Three cards of one suit on the table means somebody may have a flush, and your two pair is now worth much less than it was a second ago.