Texas Holdem Rules Chip Count

1. Chip Count For Texas Holdem
2. Texas Hold Em Chip Count
3. Texas Holdem Rules For Beginners
4. Texas Holdem Starting Chip Count

Ed. note: For those who might have missed it before, we're reprising Robert Woolley's series of articles for poker players who are new to live poker. The series is great for newcomers, and likely useful as well to those with experience playing in casinos and poker rooms.

'The guy who invented gambling was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.'

1. Texas Hold'em In hold'em, players receive two down cards as their personal hand (holecards), after which there is a round of betting. Three board cards are turned simultaneously (called the flop).
2. A bet on pair 5-8 requires three chips, with each one of texas holdem tournament chip count them being placed on 5-8, 15-18 and 25-28.To use BitCoin for an online gambling transaction, you need to have some kind of BitCoin wallet service.These are community cards that any player may use in combination with their two pocket cards to form a poker hand.

That pithy sentence is usually attributed to Julius 'Big Jules' Weintraub, a big gambler who essentially invented the 'Vegas junket' for East Coast residents, though I have not been able to identify a reliable primary source for this quotation. Whoever said it was right — you can play poker with cash, but chips make the game far easier to manage.

Texas holdem chip count One foggy night, Blackjack thought she heard the faint cry of a boat whistle but chalked it up to the wind or a bird.In case the winning number is 0 or 00, all of the above mentioned outside bets are halved and returned to the texas holdem chip count respective players. That's how Bryce Carlson, Edward O.

Because chips are such a ubiquitous feature of poker, it's easy to accept their presence without much thought. But I think there's a lot that's worth knowing about poker chips before you sit down at a table full of them.

Chips and Money (A Complicated Relationship)

The first thing to understand is that chips are real money, just in a different form. This truth is simultaneously obvious and elusive. Weintraub's observation gets at how easy it is to forget it and to start treating chips as mere abstractions.

In The Biggest Game in Town — one of the most articulate and influential books ever written about poker — Al Alvarez mused, 'The chip is like a conjurer's sleight of hand that turns an egg into a billiard ball, a necessity of life into a plaything, reality into illusion. Players who freeze up at the sight of a fifty-dollar bill, thinking it could buy them a week's food at the supermarket, will toss two green [$25] chips into the pot without even hesitating if the odds are right.'

Successful poker players rely on their weaker opponents losing touch with the equivalence of poker-world chips and real-world money. As for their own relationship with that truth, however, strong players both remember and disregard it.

That is, you must keep in mind that playing badly and as a result losing $100 in chips is the same as setting a $100 bill on fire. But at the same time, you can't let the fear of losing your hard-earned money prevent you from investing your chips in the way that will be the most profitable.

But enough abstraction. Let's deal with the tangible aspects of poker chips, as they are used in casinos. All of the following points apply equally to both tournaments and cash games, with two exceptions, which I will note when we get to them.

Color Code

The dominant color of most poker chips is related to their denominations in a nearly universal way: $5 chips are red, $25 green, and $100 black. (If you're playing with chips above this, you're not likely to be new enough to poker to be reading this article!)

The exception is the $1 chip, which casinos order in a wide variety of color schemes, with either white or blue being the most common. Meanwhile tournament chips also do not usually follow this or any other consistent color pattern.

Stacking Chips

It is both courteous and strategically advantageous to keep your chips in neat stacks of 5, 10, or 20 chips each. This makes it easy for both you and other players to count or at least closely estimate how much you have on the table — a vital consideration in no-limit and pot-limit games.

You need to know at all times which opponents can 'stack' you (i.e., take all of your chips if you lose a big confrontation), or, conversely, how much you could potentially win from them. Players whose chips are in an unorganized heap, or in uneven stacks, or in which denominations are mixed together haphazardly, make this unnecessarily difficult.

Hiding Chips

For similar reasons, it is both against the rules and deeply unethical to hide one's largest-denomination chips from the view of other players.

If you play poker long enough, sooner or later you will encounter a dishonest player who carefully hides several black chips under or behind stacks of red chips. His goal is to get you to underestimate how much money he has in play. If, for example, you have $500 but see only $200 in front of the guy in seat four, you might be more inclined to call his all-in bet than you would be if you could see the six $100 chips he has stashed behind his stacks of red.

If you see somebody trying to hide his big chips this way, you not only may, but should point it out to the dealer. If you'd prefer not to risk being seen as a 'snitch,' you can step away from the table and tell a floor person about the problem.

Poker rooms have little tolerance for such 'angle shooting', because it upsets less-experienced players when they get deceived this way, and the casino does not want to lose them as customers.

Removing Chips

Once you put chips into play at the table, you cannot remove any of them until you remove all of them to cash out. That is, you can't pocket some of your winnings to ensure that you won't lose them, no matter how tempting it seems to do so. (I'll explain this in more detail in a future article when I address the whole subject of 'table stakes.')

Similarly, you cannot just give some of your chips to another player at the table, such as your spouse or best friend. If he or she needs more chips, they must be purchased from the casino. (You can give cash out of your pocket to another player, however.)

When Cash Plays

Most casinos allow at least some forms of cash to be used in poker games. The most common rule is that $100 bills, but no other currency, can be in play. However, a few casinos allow other denominations of cash to be used in poker games, while a few don't allow any cash on the table at all.

The only way to know the house rule on this point is to ask. When cash is in play, these bills are subject to the same rules about being kept easily visible to other players and not being removed from the table until you are leaving.

I think it will be obvious to you that cash never substitutes for or supplements chips in poker tournaments. In fact, poker tournament chips are usually explicitly marked 'NO CASH VALUE' so that nobody mistakes them for ones exchangeable for cash.

Personally, I prefer using just chips, so if I win a pot that has bills in it, I will ask the dealer or chip runner to trade me chips for them.

My reason for this idiosyncrasy — and I admit that that's all it is — is simply that when I look at chip stacks, either my own or other players', my brain tends not to register the bills the same way it does the chips. As a result, I've occasionally made large errors in estimating what amounts are in play. Apparently, other people don't have this problem. Do as seems best to you.

A possibly profitable tip: Many players, when in possession of a mixture of both chips and bills, will be much more reluctant to put the cash into the pot than the chips. This is precisely because of the psychological effect mentioned at the beginning of the article, in which chips lose their equivalence to 'real' money. For that reason, a player who is betting with his cash instead of or in addition to his chips is less likely to be bluffing than one who is betting with chips only, all else being equal.

Of course, like everything about poker 'tells,' this is not a universal phenomenon. But it's sufficiently common to make it worth paying attention to see if it's true about the specific players at your table, then using that knowledge to your advantage.

There a lot more to say — and to learn — about chips. In the next article, I'll explain the rules about making bets and raises with chips.

Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.

Finding a trustworthy room to play online poker can be a monumental burden. That's all the more true if you're just looking for a place to play poker for free. We've listed five of the best play-money poker sites to enjoy and help hone your skills.

• Tags

  cash game strategytournament strategylive casino pokerbeginner strategyrulesetiquette

The majority of Texas holdem strategy you find in books and
on popular web sites focuses on the offensive side of play. The
offensive and aggressive side of the game is important, but it’s
also important to learn when you need to fold.

Every bet you can save is a bet you can use to win more money
in the future. Of course you don’t want to fold when you have a
good chance to win, or when you’re receiving the correct pot
odds to call, so it’s important to find the line in every hand
between folding and continuing with the hand.

Like every other area of your Texas holdem play, you need to
base all of your decisions about folding on the play that makes
the most money in the long run, or the play that loses the least
amount of money.

The two places where you make the most important folding
decisions are your starting hands and on the river. These two
areas are covered first, and then the flop, and finally the
turn, is covered. We finish the page with a section about
folding decisions in tournament play because it’s different than
cash game play.

Bad Starting Hands

Some Texas holdem starting hands should be folded all of the
time, some should never be folded, and many should be folded
some of the time. One thing that’s hard to find is exact advice
on which hands to play and which ones shouldn’t be played.

In this section we list a group of starting hands that should
be folded all of the time. Then we look at most of the hands
that should be folded sometimes and can be played sometimes. You
may or may not agree with all of our suggestions, and that’s
fine. If you play in a game where one of the hands we list as
unplayable can be played for a profit, feel free to play it.

But if you’re a beginning player and / or aren’t turning a
regular profit at the Texas holdem tables you can safely fold
all of the hands in the first section without worrying about it
costing you any money in the long run. These hands should even
be folded in the blinds. If you see the flop for free with one
of these hands and don’t flop a solid hand you need to check and
fold as soon as an opponent bets.

Always fold these hands:

• Any hand with a two except a pair of twos and an ace two
  suited.
• Any hand with a three except a pair of threes and an ace
  three suited.
• Any hand with a four except a pair of fours and an ace
  four suited.
• Any hand with a five except a pair of fives and an ace
  five suited.
• Any hand with a six except a pair of sixes and an ace
  six suited.
• Any hand with a seven except a pair of sevens, an ace
  seven suited, and a seven eight suited.
• Any hand with an eight except a pair of eights, an ace
  eight suited, a seven eight suited, an eight nine suited,
  and an eight 10 suited.
• Any hand with a nine except a pair of nines, an ace nine
  suited, an eight nine suited, a nine 10 suited, a nine jack
  suited, a nine queen suited, and a nine king suited.

As you can see there’s quite a large list of hands that you
can fold every time you see them. By folding these hands you’ll
make more money in the long run because they all lose money on
average by entering the pot with them.

Even many of the hands you can play should be folded most of
the time. Low pocket pairs can be dangerous in many situations
and aces with suited cards below face cards can be trap hands
that cost you a great deal of money as well. The suited
connectors with a seven, eight, or nine are bad in many
situations too.

Most of the hands you should be playing are high pairs, high
suited cards, and high unsuited cards. These hands give you the
best chance to win by completing high pairs, flushes, and high
straights.

Position has a great deal to do with what hands should be
folded. In early position and in the blinds the only hands you
don’t fold are the absolute best ones. Pocket aces, kings,
queens, ace king suited, and possibly ace queen suited are the
only ones that can usually be played from early position.

You can add a few more pocket pairs and a few more suited
high card hands in middle position but you need to continue
folding most hands. As you move into late position you can play
the other hands that aren’t listed on the fold list above, but
only in some situations. The smaller pairs and lower suited
connectors need to be folded in raised pots most of the time and
are dangerous in most cases so you end up folding most of them
after the flop when you can play them.

The River

One of the most surprising revelations most players come to
understand on the way to profitable play is if you’ve made the
correct plays to get to the river, it’s rarely correct to fold
on the river. Of course if you completely miss your draw and
don’t have any chance to win you should fold when facing a bet,
but if you have even a small chance to win it’s rarely the
correct play to fold.

Here’s a simple example that helps illustrate why a call is
usually correct.

You’ve been calling with a flush and straight draw, have
missed both draws, but paired your top card on the river, giving
you the second highest possible pair. Your opponent is
aggressive and could have been betting a draw or semi bluffing
throughout the hand.

The pot has $200 in it and your opponent bets $20.

Before we continue analyzing the hand recognize how small
this bet is in comparison to the size of the pot. This either
screams weakness or a monster. If your opponent has a monster
she may be betting small hoping to get a little extra out of
you, but most of the time it’s a feeble stab at the pot trying
to get you to fold for as little as possible. This is clearly a
calling situation.

You have to call $20 for a chance to win $220. This is a
situation where you’re being offered 11 to 1 pot odds. You only
have to win the hand roughly 9% of the time to break even. Is
there any chance you don’t win the hand over 9% of the time?

You’ll find that most situations that come up on the river
that don’t involve all in bets offer odds that are favorable if
you can win 25% of the time or less. You’ll find that even many
all in situations offer favorable odds if you can win a third of
the time.

Once you start factoring in the chances of an opponent
bluffing and of your hand being best you rarely find a situation
on the river where it’s best to fold.

If you’ve never thought about it, it may come as a surprise,
but when you miss your draw the only way you can usually win on
the river is by betting and hoping your opponent folds. So don’t
be surprised when an opponent bets on the river, even if you
think they’re weak. It might be the only way they can hope to
win the hand so instead of giving up they bet.

Chip Count For Texas Holdem

The long answer involves some of the same thinking that we
just covered about calling bets on the river.

If you miss your draw and find yourself in a situation where
the only way you can win is if your opponent folds you need to
determine how often they need to fold for a bet to be
profitable.

You miss your draw and have a jack high hand with a board
that has an ace, king, and queen. The pot has $200 in it and if
you see the show down you have no chance of winning. How many
times, or what percentage of the time, does your opponent need
to fold if you bet $20 for the play to be profitable? What about
if you bet $40 or $50 or $100?

This is fairly easy to determine with a few mathematical
calculations. Practice figuring this out at home and you’ll find
that you can quickly make an accurate estimate at the table.

In the first example, you risk $20 to get back $220. If you
do this 100 times your total cost is $2,000. Divide your total
cost by the $220 you get back when you win and you find that if
your opponent folds 9% of the time you break even. So out of 100
times you make the bet they only have to fold 9 times. This is
such a small number that you have to bet in this situation
unless you’re 100% sure your opponent will call every time.

Here are the calculations for $40, $50, and $100.

• When you bet $40 you only have to win 16.67% of the time
  to break even.
• If you bet $50 you need to win 20% of the time to break
  even.
• Betting $100 makes the break-even point 33.33%

As you can see betting in this situation is almost always
profitable. A $100 bet into a $200 pot on a missed draw may seem
dangerous, but look at it from your opponent’s point of view.
They have to make a large commitment and if they aren’t
convinced their hand is best you stand a good chance of
pressuring them into folding. It can easily look like you just
hit a set instead of missed your draw when you make a strong bet
like this.

And as you can see from the numbers above, you only need to
make them fold a third of the time.

Our Advice: Unless you’re clearly beat, you should rarely
fold on the river. You should always try to determine if a call
is a positive expectation play, but if you have a doubt you
should usually call. And even when you’re beat a bet may be the
best play instead of a check and fold.

The Flop

After you see the flop you’ve seen five out of the seven
total cards that will make your hand and you should be able to
make a good decision about where you stand at this point in the
hand. While almost anything can happen before the flop, the
lists of possible outcomes for the hand are greatly reduced
after the flop.

At this time you need to decide if you’re going to fight
until the end or exit the hand. You see player after player
chasing a hand, seeing one more card on the turn before folding.
This habit ends up costing players enough to wipe out any
possible profit.

Players call a bet on the flop so they can try for that
inside straight or try for a higher pair, even when they’re
clearly behind in the hand.

Don’t ever take a card chasing a hand that doesn’t offer the
correct pot odds. Folding a losing long term hand here saves a
bet. Any bet saved is extra ammunition you can use at another
time to win more.

Texas holdem is never just about the current hand or
situation. Everything you do is a combination of the game that
has lead up to the current situation, the present hand, and
everything in the future that’s tied to the current hand.

Just because most strategy advice focuses on aggressive play
and the offensive part of holdem doesn’t mean folding can’t be
profitable. Here’s a list of flop situations where folding is
the most profitable long term play.

Scenario 1

You see the flop with ace king and the flop is jack, ten, and
three. A tight player fires a bet of $20, making the pot $120.
Unless the board pairs you’ll win the pot with a straight and
you may or may not win if you pair your ace or king.

The problem with pairing your ace or king is it makes a
possible straight for your opponent. So in this situation you
can usually count half of the cards that pair one of your cards
as outs. So you’re looking at four outs for the straight and
three more for pairing one of your cards for a total of seven
outs. The problem is if you pair your ace and an opponent hits a
straight how much will you lose before you get away from the
hand?

While the pot odds make a call close, the negative implied
odds make it a situation where you need to fold and wait for a
better situation where you can invest your money.

Scenario 2

You make a pre flop raise with a pair of jacks from late
position and get called by an early position limper and a middle
position limper. The flop has an ace and a king, the first
player bets and the second raises. It’s always good to be
optimistic, but it’s difficult to imagine two hands your
opponents can possibly hold that doesn’t have at least one of
them dominating your jacks.

The truth is you’re probably behind both hands at this point
and instead of throwing good money away you need to fold. You
were the aggressive player before the flop and not only has one
player improved their hand enough to make a bet into you, the
other raises. These are both clear indications of the strength
of the other hands compared to yours.

A single bet may not be enough to make you fold, though in
this case it might, but the bet and raise are just too much to
call.

Scenario 3

Texas Hold Em Chip Count

In a no limit Texas holdem game you call an early raise with
a pair of eights. The flop is three, four, seven, and the pre
flop bettor makes a continuation bet on the flop. Even though
you have an over pair, when you play for a set against a raise
you have to be able to fold when you don’t hit your hand.

While it’s possible you could have the best hand, the odds
are against it. And if you’re dominated by an over pair, which
is likely, you’ll end up losing a big pot. The best play is a
fold.

The Turn

The turn is listed last because if you’re playing the best
Texas holdem as possible and folding on the flop when you should
the turn generally plays itself.

If you’re ahead on the flop you’re generally still ahead on
the turn and need to continue building the value of the pot.
When you’re behind on the flop but getting the correct pot odds
to call if you haven’t improved your hand on the turn you
usually still have the correct odds to see the river.

Have you ever read the statement that if you do a good job
selecting your starting hands and make the best decisions on the
flop that the rest of the hand plays itself? This is a fairly
accurate statement.

If you find yourself in a situation where you should have
folded on the flop but wanted to see the turn, don’t compound
the mistake by chasing a bad draw to the river. Of course you
should try to avoid this situation, but never make it worse just
because of your prior mistake.

Here’s a couple of situations where seeing the turn was
correct but a fold becomes correct at this time.

Scenario 1

You have second pair and a flush draw and make a semi bluff
on the flop, but get called by two opponents. Your hand doesn’t
improve on the turn and you face an all in that creates a
negative expected value when you determine the pot odds. A semi
bluff is usually a profitable play, but learn to recognize when
one doesn’t work out and cut your losses.

Scenario 2

You have top pair with top kicker against two opponents and
the board pairs and puts the third suited card out on the turn.
Both opponents seem to come alive and start a betting war. Even
though you may have had the best hand entering the turn it’s not
likely that you still have the best hand. And if you’re behind
to either opponent at this time you’re probably drawing dead.

Tournaments

Everything we’ve talked about so far deals with cash or ring
game play. Tournament play requires a different thought process
when it comes to folding. You often have to fold in a positive
expectation situation to conserve your chips for situations
where you’re the favorite to win.

If that sounds like it is a rare situation, bear with us for
a minute. We’ll show you how you’re often in a positive
expectation situation where you aren’t the favorite to win. When
you see what we mean you’ll realize you already knew this.

In a cash game a positive expectation situation is almost
always one where you want to invest as much money as possible.
In the long run you make money from these situations, even if
you lose sometimes. The wins over time more than make up for the
losses and show a profit. But this doesn’t mean you’re the
favorite to win any single hand.

Texas Holdem Rules For Beginners

You have an open end straight draw and two over cards on the
turn, the pot has $300 in it, and you have to call a $50 all in
bet. You have 14 outs which mean you have over a 30% chance to
win the hand. This is clearly a situation where you aren’t the
favorite to win the hand, but you still have a positive expected
value. You only have to win 15% of the time to show a long term
profit.

Let’s compare this to a different situation.

You have two pair on the turn against a player with a flush
draw. They have a 19.57% chance to win the hand, making you a
favorite of over 80%.

In both situations you’re going to make money in the long
run, but in the second situation you’re going to win the hand a
much higher percentage of the time.

In a tournament you have a limited number of chips so you
have to protect them while trying to make them grow. The only
way to win more chips is to risk the ones you have, but you need
to risk them in situations where you have the best chance to
increase them.

It’s fairly easy to see that even in a tournament the long
term profitability of both examples described above is positive,
but in the first example you’re only going to win a hair over
30% of the time.

So if you’re in a tournament situation where you can play for
all of your chips in a positive expectation hand but only have a
25% chance of remaining in the tournament what are you going to
do?

Texas Holdem Starting Chip Count

Three out of every four times you play the situation you get
knocked out of the tournament but the one time out of four it
sets you up nicely for a run that should help you finish in the
money. Only you can decide which way you want to play, but an
argument can easily be made for both sides.

On the other hand if you have an 80% chance to win a hand in
a tournament you have to make the play. You rarely find a
situation where you have a larger edge and you can’t fold.

The only way you’d ever consider folding in the second
situation is if you’re on the bubble and are in danger of
missing the money if you lose. And even in this situation you’ll
almost always need to call because of the large edge. With an
80% chance to win you’ll win the hand four out of every five
times you play.

Unless something tragic is going to happen, like being
evicted, unless you finish in the money the best play is to
call.

For a more in depth discussion of tournament playing decisions you should read our Texas holdem tournament pages.

It can be a difficult balancing act for Texas holdem
tournament players to choose between long term expectations in
short term negative situations and waiting for more certain
short term results. Everyone wants to only play hands where they
have a large edge, but these situations don’t come up often
enough to make it feasible to always wait on them.

Of course even when you find situations where you’re a big
favorite often enough you can still end up losing a hand. You
just hope that you’ve made enough of a cushion on the other
hands to take the loss and remain alive in the tournament.

If you’re an 80% favorite to win a hand it means you win four
out of every five times you play it. In simple terms this means
if you’re in the situation five times in a tournament you’re
going to lose one of them. So if you’re all in all five times
you’re out of the tournament.

Conclusion

Most Texas holdem players look for reasons to call instead of
reasons to fold. Most Texas holdem players lose money in the
long run.

Do you think these two things could be related?

We’re not saying these two things are directly related, but
they do appear to have some connection. Good players look for
both reasons to call or raise and reasons to fold. Then they
weigh the benefits and long term profitability of each action
and make the correct decision more often than not.

If the only thing you do is look for reasons to call you need
to start looking for reasons to fold as well. Only by looking at
the current situation as realistically as possible and not
through rose colored glasses will you be able to play the most
profitable poker.