Texas Hold’em Poker

How to play

You are dealt two cards face down. Five more are turned up in the middle across three rounds of betting — three at once, then one, then one. Your hand is the best five cards you can make from any of the seven, and you win by having the best of them at the end or by making everybody else fold.

On your turn you can fold, check when nothing is owed, call what is owed, or raise. Every button says what it costs, and the slider cannot be dragged to an amount the rules would refuse.

What beats what

1. 1. straight flush
2. 2. four of a kind
3. 3. full house
4. 4. flush
5. 5. straight
6. 6. three of a kind
7. 7. two pair
8. 8. pair
9. 9. high card

When two players hold the same kind of hand the higher cards decide it, and if those tie as well the pot is split — down to the odd chip, which goes to the first player left of the dealer button.

Modes

6-max table

Five opponents, deep stacks and no clock. The fastest way in.

Heads-up

One opponent, every hand. A completely different game — you play far more of them.

Tournament

Six seats and blinds that climb every few hands. Last one holding chips wins.

Daily

Twenty hands, and everyone gets the same cards today. Reloading will not change them.

Hand Lab

Every hand explained afterwards — what you had, what they had, and what the odds were. Nothing is recorded.

The opponents

Before the flop they play a starting-hand range that widens with position. After it they run a Monte Carlo simulation of the hand against the number of players still in, compare the answer with the price the pot is offering, and take the stack sizes into account. They bluff sometimes, from late position, on boards that missed everybody.

Casual

Plays far too many hands and calls when it should not. It will pay you off.

Steady

Folds its worst hands, respects the odds and bluffs occasionally.

Sharp

Plays a tight, disciplined range, respects the price exactly and uses position.

The levels differ in how many hands they play and how loosely they call — measured, not asserted: Steady beats Casual by about 1.2 big blinds a hand heads-up, and Sharp beats Steady by about half of one. They never differ in what they are allowed to see.

A few things worth knowing

• Calling 50 into a pot of 150 costs you a quarter of the resulting pot, not a third — the call itself is part of what you are trying to win. You need to have the best hand about a quarter of the time for that call to break even.
• A pair of aces beats a random hand about 85 times in a hundred; seven-deuce offsuit wins about 35. Almost everything else is between 50 and 65, which is why position and price decide far more hands than cards do.
• Two suited cards are worth appreciably more than the same two offsuit, but far less than most people assume — being suited adds only a few points of equity. Being connected adds about as much.

Privacy and local play

Your table, your settings and your record are stored on this device and nowhere else. There is no account, no sign-in and no gameplay request to any server. The reset button clears this game’s data and leaves every other Zerdly tool alone.

Questions

Is this real-money gambling?

No. The chips are fictional game points and there is nothing to buy, deposit, cash out or wager. There is no payment of any kind anywhere on Zerdly Interactive, and no way to convert a chip into anything.

Can the computer see my cards?

No, and not as a matter of care. The only thing an opponent is ever given is one seat's view of the table, and that object has no field for anybody else's face-down cards — not an empty one, no field at all. The same is true of the message sent to the background worker that does their thinking.

Are the cards actually shuffled?

Yes, with a Fisher-Yates shuffle drawing an unbiased index at each step. The common broken version of that algorithm is measurably biased within a few thousand deals, so the shuffle is tested by counting where a given card lands across 26,000 of them.

How does it work out side pots?

Pots are always sliced at every distinct amount the players have committed, so a three-way all-in for different amounts produces a main pot everybody can win and side pots only the deeper stacks can. A player who folded still leaves their chips in the pot but cannot win it.

Can I reload to get a better hand in the Daily?

No, and not because it is forbidden. Each hand of the Daily is dealt from the date and that hand's number, so hand seven is the same fifty-two cards however you arrive at it. Reloading, or coming back tomorrow, deals exactly the same thing.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. The rules, the shuffle, the opponents, the sounds and your saved table all run in your browser. There is no account, and clearing this game's data leaves every other Zerdly tool untouched.

More Zerdly Interactive

• Four in a Row — The classic, with an opponent that actually looks ahead.
• Codebreaker — Deduce a hidden code from exact and misplaced feedback.
• Dominoes — Draw dominoes against an opponent that cannot see your hand.