In this article we will answer the most frequently asked questions in poker. There are so many questions beginners ask so hopefully you will find your answer in our poker FAQ.
One of the basics of Texas Hold’em is understanding card strength. One of the key aspects of winning a game of poker is to be able to make the most correct decisions as often as possible; therefore, selecting the hands you will go to war with is among the first steps. Worst Possible Hand In Texas Holdem 4 deposits of £10, £20, £50, £100 matched with a bonus cash offer of same value (14 day expiry). 35x real Worst Possible Hand In Texas Holdem money cash wagering (within 30 days) on eligible games before bonus cash is credited.
A Royal flush is the best hand possible. This is extremely unlikely to obtain. I have played millions of hands and only had it twice in almost two decades of playing. The best starting hand is two aces AKA pocket aces.
The blinds are forced bets. There are two, the small blind and the big blind, both to the left of the dealer button. The big blind is usually double the small blind. These forced bets help create action.
A cash game involves static blinds e.g. £1/£2 and involve cash. Tournaments have a fixed fee to enter, you are paid based on where you finish, i.e. the higher the place the more money you make. The blinds go up at timed levels in tournaments. These two different forms of poker are radically different and require different mindsets.
7-2 Offsuit is mathematically the worst possible hand to start with.
A straight draw is when you have four cards to a straight (five cards in sequential order) and one more will complete your straight. There are two types of straight draws, open ended where you have 4 in a row and need one card either side or gutshot straight draw, where only one card can help you.
Similar to straight draw but four cards of the same suit and one more of suite needed to complete your flush (five cards of the same suit).
The river is the 5th and final community card. It is the last round of betting where the pot must be won if it hasn’t already.
Contrary to old movies, you can call all your chips without having to borrow to meet your opponents bet. If he bets £100 and you have £90 and call, he simply takes back the extra £10.
These are tournaments that cost nothing to enter. They usually reward you with loyalty points or cash. They typically have many entrants.
A bad beat occurs when you lose a pot where you were a significant favourite. Many players are quick to cry bad beat when it’s in fact quite close mathematically.
The dealer button signifies the last position to act post flop and also where the blinds will be. It moves round the table clockwise at the close of every hand. You are not required to deal if you are on the dealer button. It is the most favourable position at the table as you get to act last on every round after the flop.
Did our Poker FAQ not answer any of your questions? Ask us your free question and we will get back to you soon.
The final table of the 2019 World Series of Poker $50,000 Poker Players Championship produced quite possibly the worst bad beat in poker history as Bryce Yockey saw a 99.843% hand turn into dust when Josh Arieh beat him on the final draw in 2-7 Triple Draw.
Nick Schulman coined the bad beat that Arieh put on Yockey, “The bad beat to end all bad beats,” before it happened and to fully grasp the situation you have to watch the clip.
Yockey started with the second strongest hand in the game, which has a 1 in 2,548 chance of occurring while Arieh needed three draws to beat him and make the only possible combination that would do so. A crazy detail about this hand is that the only path for Arieh to the winning hand was for him to make a straight first before he could draw to the perfect 7-5 low.
“This is the worst beat I’ve ever seen in a televised tournament,” Schulman said, as Yockey made his departure from the tournament in fourth place. Yockey collected $325,989 for his efforts after which John Esposito, Phil Hui, and Josh Arieh continued to battle for the $1,099,311 first prize. Watch the full final table of this event on PokerGO right now.
In the game of Limit 2-7 Triple Draw, the goal is to make the worst possible five-card hand without a straight or a flush. The best hand in this game, as shown in this video, is 7-5-4-3-2 followed by 7-6-4-3-2. In this game, there are three draws during which you can ask for as many new cards as you want.
Bad beats in poker are common and every player who’s played a game or two will have seen his or her aces disappear like snow in the bright Las Vegas sun when a king on the river gives your opponent three of a kind.
To provide some context on how crazy Yockey’s hand was, let’s draw some parallels with No Limit Texas Hold’em. Aces versus kings before the flop is an 81.06% favorite, a number that increases to 91.62% after a blank flop and 95.45% on the turn. Having only two cards to improve with the river to come is still a 4.55% chance of winning!
In an even worse scenario, the worst of two sets on the flop has 4.34% with two cards to come and that number is reduced to 2.27% with only the river left to make four of a kind. For some more context, winning with ace-king offsuit versus ace-king offsuit has a 2.17% chance but in that case, of course, you are 95.65% to casually split the pot!
Ever played so wild that you ended up all in with deuce-three offsuit against pocket aces? Well, you still have a 13.3% chance to win the hand before the flop! After a random flop where your only remaining winning outs are running cards, however, you have a 1.52% chance to win and even that is still a lot better than having just 0.16% as Josh Arieh did!
Click this link to see the Twitter conversation about this hand in which some big name poker pros chime in on how unlikely this runout truly was.
Want to watch more than 100 days of live poker every single year? Subscribe to PokerGO right now to ensure you don’t miss the next massive bad beat or million-dollar payout!