Poker – A Quick Refresher

In most home poker games, the deal is passed clockwise (right to left), from person to person after each hand. Casinos furnish a professional dealer who deals every hand for you. But because betting position is important in every hand, we use the small plastic puck called the button in order to keep track of whose deal it would be if the players were passing the deck and dealing the hands themselves. The person who owns the button in any given hand has the significant advantage of being the last one to act in each round of betting, and so the dealer moves the button one spot clockwise after the end of each hand.

Before the hand begins, the player sitting directly to the left of the button posts the small blind (a bet which is usually half the size of the big blind, but which in some games may be as small as one-third of the big blind and in others as large as two-thirds of the big blind). The player to the immediate left of the small blind posts the big blind. The first card is then dealt to the player who posted the small blind, and the deal proceeds until each player has his four hole cards. The player to the left of the big blind is the first to take action; as in Hold'em, his options for the first round are limited to calling (matching the big blind), raising, and folding.

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Poker – A Quick Run-through Of The Betting And Dealing

In limit Omaha, there are four rounds of betting. During the first and second rounds, you can bet $1X, and for the third and fourth rounds you may bet $2X. (In these particulars, the game is identical to Hold'em.) To show you what I mean by "$1X" and "$2X," if you were playing $400- $800-limit Omaha (you'd better bring $50,000 to that game!) all bets and raises would be made in $400 increments during the first two rounds, and in $800 increments during the last two rounds. In a game like that you can easily lose $4,000 in one hand.

As in Hold'em, a button and two blinds (small and big) are used (if these concepts are unfamiliar to you, you skipped Chapter 2), and after the blinds are posted, you are each dealt four cards facedown. After you've all looked at your cards, the first round of betting begins. When that round of betting is complete, the dealer turns three cards faceup in the middle of the table. These three faceup cards are community cards, available for use by everyone. As in Hold'em, these cards are commonly called the flop. After the flop, there is a second round of betting, still at $1X, and when it is complete, the dealer turns up a fourth community card, commonly called fourth street or the turn card.
Now the third round of betting begins. Remember: this is when the stakes double. After this round of betting is complete, the dealer turns up the fifth and last community card; this one is commonly called the river. Now the last round of betting proceeds, and although the dealer is done dealing cards for this hand, his job is far from over.

After the last round of betting is complete (several players have no doubt folded by this time), the dealer helps determine who won the pot, because in Omaha, determining who won is a bit more complicated than it is in Hold'em. Since each player must use exactly two cards out of his hand, beginners (and often even experienced players) sometimes misread their hands. That's why I say the dealer's job is far from over when he has finished dealing the cards in Omaha (of course, often the dealer is wrong too).

This is also why it's a good idea for beginners and intermediates to lay their cards faceup on the table, all of them visible, at the end of each hand, even if they think they've lost. If you expose your cards at the proper time, the dealer may notice that you have a better hand than you thought, one you may have overlooked. Don't be lazy, though; don't depend on the dealer to read your hand for you. After all, you've been checking, betting, calling, or raising on the basis of your own ability to read your hand, all the way through the hand. Laying your hand down at the end is just a fail-safe move to make sure you don't accidentally overlook a winning combination.

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