All About Poker - Written by Pixel-Lotteries.com

In any game of poker there is what is called a dealer chip, which basically determines the order of betting and who the first card is dealt to etc... At the beginning of the session a single card is dealt out to each of the players and the player with the highest ranking card is nominated as the initial dealer. Please note that in poker aces are normally assumed to be the highest ranking card, the only exception being when in use for a low straight (A2345). After the end of each round the dealer chip is passed onto the player to the left, i.e. the dealer chip moves in a clockwise direction after each round.

So what's the significance of the dealer chip? Why bother having it at all? Well if you're playing at home it means that everyone has to have their turn at dealing, which is much fairer. However they even have this little chip in casinos where there are professional dealers dealing for you - i.e. this isn't the main purpose of the dealer chip.

There are in fact three reasons for having the dealer chip:

1. Dealing - At the beginning of each round the cards are dealt to each player starting with the player to the left of the dealer. Note that the cards are dealt again in a clockwise fasion. Each player is dealt one card at a time, i.e. every player will have one card before the player to the left of the dealer receives their second card.
2. Blinds - In Texas Holdem there are small compulsory bets that have to be posted before the round starts. These are called blinds and there are two types, the small blind and the big blind. The big blind is double the value of the small blind and these are posted by the two players to the left of the dealer - the player sitting directly next to the dealer posts the small blind and the player to the left of him the big blind. The blinds exist to ensure that there is always some chips/cash in the pot, and also to set the minimum bet in a game of poker. The minimum bet is equal to the value of the big blind set at the table at that particular point in time. The exact betting procedure will be discussed in a later posting.
3. Action - Except for the preflop betting round the action always starts to the left of the dealer. Note - preflop the action in fact starts to the player to the left of the big blind.

As you can see the dealer chip is an essential part of playing poker so the points discussed above should be learnt. In fact just learn everything on this site!

# posted by H.Hashi : (Darkhodge on DP) @ 12:38 PM