Friday, December 23, 2005
Betting
At the start of the round of bets the player with the action is presented with a choice of 3 actions:
- Check
- Bet
- Fold
Please note that a player can only check when the players before them have checked. As discussed in the "Poker Terminology" section "check" refers to when you do not want to bet anything yet. You are basically passing the action onto the next player, i.e. the player to your left, until either everyone checks in which case that round of betting is over, or someone
bets in which case the action will carry on going around the table until everyone has bet the equal amount (or indeed fold).
When someone has bet, the choices the players have are as follows:
- Call - Match the bet that the highest bettor has posted.
- Fold - Give up
- Re-Raise - Bet even more. Please note that this has to be integar multiples of what the previous bettor has posted.
In case this is unclear we shall use the following example. It may help to draw this out on paper. Diagrams will be added instead sometime in the near future but we need to draw them first:
- Consider a 6 player table, with players A-F sitting down.
- Blinds are $0.01/$0.02 - meaning that the small blind is $0.01 and the big blind is $0.02.
- The dealer chip is on player A.
- A round of poker starts.
- Firstly the two blinds must be posted before anything else can occur. Therefore player B posts the small blind $0.01, and player C posts the big blind $0.02.
- The two cards are then dealt out to each player and player D (remember - left of the big blind starts the action in the preflop betting round) starts the action.
- Player D calls as he has good cards (AT suited). Note he could have checked, bet or folded.
- Player E bets twice the minimum bet 2 x $0.02 = $0.04. Note that everyone must now at least match this value to play on and also that the betting must now be integar multiples of this value.
- Player F,A and B fold.
- Player C in fact has pocket aces (AA dealt to him) so re-raises to 8 x $0.04 = $0.32. Note that he could have called, re-raised or folded.
- Player D folds.
- Player E calls.
- Round of betting over - goto next stage which is in this case the dealing of the flop.
Hopefully that example has helped to clarify things and not confused you further!
