Tired of Big Two and ready to try Texas Hold’em? Everyone has looked up the rules, yet once you sit down the game still stalls: how many chips does each player get? How big are the blinds? Whose turn is it? Someone is all in but short — how do you split the pot?
The rules themselves are covered in What Texas Hold’em Is. This post is about what a rulebook leaves out but every home game runs into: no dealer, no software, so every ruling falls to the people at the table. Read it top to bottom and you can deal the first hand tonight.
1. What you need
Three things:
- A deck of cards: jokers out, 52 cards. Two decks is better — one in play while the other is shuffled and ready, so nobody waits for the shuffle
- Chips: a standard 300-chip set covers six players. No chips? Coins, board-game tokens or play money all work, as long as everyone agrees what each one is worth before you start
- A dealer button: any small object that does not look like a chip. It decides who posts the blinds, who acts first and who deals, and it moves one seat clockwise after every hand
One more thing worth having: a hand-rankings chart. What beginner games most often get wrong is not the rules but hand-ranking questions like “does a flush beat a straight?” Keep the full hand rankings open on a phone by the table and nobody has to look it up at every showdown.
2. Three things to settle before the first hand
Nobody sets the rules for a home game. The arguments usually come from something nobody agreed on at the start, not from the cards. Settle these three before you sit down:
Blinds and starting stacks
Start with a small blind of 1, a big blind of 2, and 200 per player — 100 big blinds each. That is the most common starting depth online and live, and most examples on this site use it too. Give people fewer chips and someone is all in within a few hands, before anyone has practised a decision after the flop.
A 300-chip set (60 of each colour) splits like this for six players:
| Colour (example) | Value | Chips each | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 1 | 10 | 10 |
| Red | 5 | 8 | 40 |
| Green | 25 | 6 | 150 |
| Total | 24 | 200 |
Six players use 60 white, 48 red and 36 green, which the set covers exactly. Hand out plenty of small chips, since blinds, calls and change all run on them. With more players the principle is the same: the smallest value gets the most chips.
What happens when someone busts
This one is easy to overlook until the first player runs out of chips and someone asks: does that player just watch from here on? Two options:
- Rebuys allowed: a busted player takes another starting stack and keeps playing; at the end, everyone compares what they hold to what they started with. Nobody sits out, which suits a game that runs until everyone is tired
- No rebuys, blinds go up on a timer: the blinds rise one level every 20 minutes, busted players are out, and you play until one player has everything. You get a clear finish
For the second option, the blinds can climb like this (200 per player):
1/2 → 2/4 → 3/6 → 5/10 → 10/20 → 20/40
As the blinds grow, short stacks are forced all in and the game winds down on its own. A phone timer is all you need.
These two options are the difference between a cash game and a tournament; Cash Games, Tournaments and Time-Limited Tournaments compares them in full.
Who deals
Without a dealer, whoever holds the dealer button deals, and the job passes left with the button. Deal clockwise starting with the small blind, one card at a time, two rounds.
Before the flop, the turn and the river, burn a card: take the top card of the deck, put it aside face down, then turn the community cards. It keeps anyone from catching a glimpse of the top card during the shuffle or the deal.
One last thing needs no discussion, only awareness: in this post, chips are points. Once money gets involved in a game at home, the law that applies is different from the law for a commercial venue or for playing online; Is Texas Hold’em Legal in Taiwan? lays out the statutes and court rulings if you want to read up.
3. How a hand runs: the 30-second version
- The two players to the left of the button post the small blind and the big blind, in that order
- Everyone gets two private hole cards
- Preflop: the player to the left of the big blind acts first, then play goes clockwise
- Three community cards (the flop) → a betting round
- A fourth card (the turn) → a betting round
- A fifth card (the river) → the last betting round
- Players still in the hand show down; each makes the best five cards from their two hole cards and the five on the board
- The button moves one seat clockwise, and the next hand starts
A betting round ends when everyone has acted at least once and every player still in the hand has put the same amount in this round. If at any point only one player has not folded, that player takes the pot without showing.
On your turn there are six possible actions — check, bet, call, raise, fold, all in — and The Six Actions at the Table explains each one and what it means. For what each street is for and why the blinds exist, go back to What Texas Hold’em Is, which has the full introduction to the game.
4. Three rulings that stall a self-dealt game
Small details you never notice on an online platform may only show up once you play at home. These three are where beginner games most often stop because nobody knows how to handle them.
1. Whose turn is it
One line to remember: preflop, the player left of the big blind acts first; after the flop, the first player still in the hand to the left of the button acts first.
Preflop runs differently because the two blinds were forced to bet already, so they act last. From the flop on, the order goes back to normal and the button always acts last — which is why the button is the most enjoyable and most profitable seat. The Position Guide goes through what each seat is like and how to play it.
The exception is when only two players are left: the button posts the small blind and the other player posts the big blind. The button acts first preflop and last after the flop. When a tournament-style game gets down to two players, this is the rule most often gotten wrong.
2. What is the minimum raise
A raise must be at least as large as the previous bet or raise.
Blinds are 1/2 and someone raises to 6 — 4 more than the big blind. The next player who wants to raise must make it at least 10 (6 plus another 4), not 8.
Online software filters out an illegal amount, so you cannot bet it at all. At home, when nobody knows the rule, you get raises of “one more” that send the action around the table again for nothing (the full explanation is in the raise section of the six actions). Live tables have a few more conventions — push your chips in one motion, what you say out loud is binding — listed in section 7 of the same post. Pick the important ones and agree on them before the first hand, and you will spend less time stopping mid-game to discuss them.
3. Someone is all in, but short
Every home game runs into this, and it often stalls while people work out the math.
An all-in player can only win up to what their own chips cover. Say A goes all in for 50, and B and C each have 200 left; both call the 50. The pot is now 150 and all three players have a share in it. That is the main pot.
After the flop, B bets 100 and C calls. Those 200 belong to B and C only; A has no share. That is a side pot, and it goes in a separate stack.
After the river, the showdown settles the pots in two steps:
- Side pot: only B and C compare hands, and the better one takes 200
- Main pot: all three compare, and the best hand takes 150
So even if A has the best hand, A only gets the main pot; the side pot, which is larger, is between B and C. In practice there is one thing to do: the moment someone is all in, push the amount they can match into its own stack, keep later bets separate, and the showdown will add up.
One more: who shows first
On the river, the last player to bet or raise shows first. If everyone checked the river, start with the first player still in the hand to the left of the button and go clockwise. A player who sees they are beaten can fold without showing.
When you show, turn both cards face up. The cards decide, not what anyone says — calling your own hand wrong does not change the result, and everyone at the table reads the board together.
5. Two beginner habits that pay off right away
Once the rules are down, the most common home-game pattern is: everyone just calls the big blind and five or six players see the flop. Both habits below start from there.
If you play a hand, raise to 2.5–3 big blinds
When you have a hand you want to play and nobody in front of you has raised, do not just call the big blind; raise.
Calling only the big blind is called limping. It looks cheap, but it hands a cheap price to everyone behind you and folds nobody out. A raise pushes the weak hands out and gives you the initiative — after the flop you decide how big the pot gets, instead of following someone else.
How much: 2.5 big blinds is the default in the Complete Guide to Preflop Play; at a home table where everyone likes to call, 3 big blinds is fine. If players have already limped in front of you, add 1 big blind for each limper. With blinds of 1/2 that means raising to 5 or 6; with two limpers in front, to 9 or 10.
One rule to keep: in the same spot, do not change your raise size with the strength of your hand. Raise big with strong hands and small with ordinary ones, and the people at the table will see it within a few sessions — and at a home game it is the same few friends every time, so they will see it sooner.
Which hands are worth playing, and from which seats you can play more, the same preflop guide covers; to drill it directly, the preflop trainer deals you a spot and checks your answer on the spot.
With AA, KK or QQ, do not just call
The most common mistake with the three biggest pairs is not wanting to scare anyone off, so the player just calls the big blind and “traps”.
If nobody has raised, raise. If someone has already raised, raise again. That second raise is a 3-bet, sized at roughly 3 to 4 times the other player’s raise.
The reason is the number of players. These three hands are very strong against one opponent, and much less so against several. Simulating each against random hands, with every hand played to the river without folding, the share of pots won comes out as:
| Hand | Against 1 random hand | Against 4 random hands |
|---|---|---|
| AA | about 85% | about 56% |
| KK | about 82% | about 50% |
| about 80% | about 45% |
Calling the big blind and seeing the flop five-handed is the right-hand column: QQ wins the pot less than half the time. Raise the field down to one or two opponents and these hands become as strong as you thought they were — and the pot gets built while you are furthest ahead.
When pocket aces can skip the raise, and how to play them after the flop, is covered in full in How to Play Pocket Aces and How to Play Pocket Aces After the Flop.
Back to the questions at the top: how to split the chips, how big the blinds are, and what happens when someone busts get settled before the first hand; whose turn it is, how much to raise and how to split an all-in pot get ruled on with section 4. The rest is playing more hands — the order of play and the chip counting turn into habit quickly.
Read this next: once you can start a game, deal and make the rulings, a few evenings in you will probably notice that winning and losing do not line up with how well you played — why a beginner might beat a pro covers how many hands it takes before a skill gap shows, and why you cannot wait for results to improve.
If the rules still have gaps, or you want to know what to read next, go back to What Texas Hold’em Is; it ends with a map that puts every guide on this site in order.