Driven by the popularity of televised poker, particularly the main event of the World Series of Poker, Texas Hold'em (more commonly, ‘Hold'em’) has become the world’s most popular poker game, both in live casinos and online at PokerStars.
Before you begin playing Hold'em, you'll want to learn the rules. In Hold'em, each player is dealt two private cards (known as ‘hole cards’) that belong to them alone. Five community cards are dealt face-up, to form the ‘board’. All players in the game use these shared community cards in conjunction with their own hole cards to each make their best possible five-card poker hand. In Hold'em, a player may use any combination of the seven cards available to make the best possible five-card poker hand, using zero, one or two of their private hole cards. To view the rankings of poker hands, visit our poker hand ranks page.
The four major variations of Hold'em at PokerStars are distinguished from each other by their betting limits:
- Limit Texas Hold'em: There is a pre-determined betting limit on each round of betting.
- No Limit Texas Hold'em: A player can bet any amount, up to all of his or her chips..
- Pot Limit Texas Hold'em: A player can bet any amount, up to the size of the pot.
- Mixed Texas Hold'em: The game switches between rounds of Limit Texas Hold'em and No Limit Texas Hold'em.
Each of these Hold'em variations are available to play on PokerStars for free (play money) or for real money.
