Ever confidently shouted “royal flush!” while holding four 7s and a 2? This guide is for you.
If you’re always losing at poker night round your mate’s, or you’re just looking to pick up a new skill, you’re in the right place. This isn’t some high-roller, cigar-in-hand, private room in Vegas type instruction manual – it’s poker for the average Joe.
In this guide, we’ll break the game down to the bare bones. You’ll learn how to play, how to win, how to not look like a first-timer, and even how to read other players – no psychology PhD needed. You’ll walk away with a working knowledge of poker, a solid starting strategy, and even a downloadable cheat sheet to come back to when you need to remember what hand is better.
Nobody likes being the person who has to ask, “So, a straight is better than a flush, right?”, halfway through the hand. So buckle up, get your chips and let’s up the ante.
Want to skip the info and just fake it til you make it? Download the Poker Cheat Sheet here.
We know you probably have at least a rough idea of what poker is. But we couldn’t call this ‘Poker For Dummies’ without stripping it right back, so here we go.
At its heart, poker is a card-based game where you try to win by either having the best hand, or convincing everyone else that you do. The gambling side comes from betting money – or whatever you like, really – on ending up with the best hand still in the game. As for the rest? It’s just flair, maths, and a whole lot of luck.
It’s not just one game, either – poker is its own genre. There are heaps of versions, from the ever popular Texas Hold’em to nice variants with house rules that change with every game.
But all the poker types share the same core – it’s always part luck, part skill and part performance. And you’re about to learn the lot.
You can only control the table if you know what game you’re playing – and just poker isn’t gonna cut it. There’s a whole family of poker-style games, and each has its own quirks. We can’t explain every version out there – unless you want to be reading this guide for the rest of the 21st century – so we’ll focus on the ones you’re most likely to come across.
Want to find out about a version we haven’t discussed here? Let us know at info@australiangamblingonline.com!
This is the big dog, the one you’ve seen in films. It’s also the most commonly played, so the best for getting started with.
You get two cards, known as your hole cards. Five more are dealt face-up in the middle (the community cards), and you use all seven to make the best five-card hand you can. There are four betting rounds, with plenty of room for bluffing and perfecting your poker face.
Omaha takes the basis of Texas Hold’em and adds a touch more chaos. You’ve got four hole cards instead of two, but you must use two hole cards and three community cards in your hand. The idea is that more cards means more combo potential – but there’s also more chance of misreading your own hand and looking like a right drongo.
If there’s poker in a Wild West movie, it’s probably five card draw. It’s a simple, quick, casual approach to poker, but it’s rarely played in serious circles anymore.
You’re dealt five cards, then you can swap some out after the first round (sort of a weird card-based Secret Santa) before a final betting round.
The OG poker game, before Texas Hold’em took over. There are no community cards – everyone gets their own mix of face-up and face-down cards. It’s pretty niche these days, but still around for old-school fans who like maths and memory games.
If you’re not sure where to start, go with Texas Hold’em. It’s the most played, the most accessible, and the easiest to find a game for – both at a land-based casino or online. And once you’ve got Hold’em down, you’ll find the rest start to make a bit more sense.
Now you know what your options are, we’ll get to the good bit. From here on in, we’re gonna focus on Texas Hold’em – but let us know if you’d like a deep dive into another variant, and we’d be more than happy to oblige.
Ready to go from zero to hero at the poker table? Let’s break it down, play by play.
You’ll usually have between 2-10 players at a table. If there are more than 10, it gets pretty chaotic – so keep the numbers small if you’re just starting out. Poker is played with a standard 52-card deck, and the dealer will give each player two private cards (hole cards). Then, five community cards are dealt face up in the middle, so all players can see them. Your job is to make the best five-card hand you can using your two hole cards and the five community cards.
If you’re to the left of the dealer, bad luck. Before any cards are even dealt, two players put some chips in the pot to get things started. These are the blinds, and they aren’t voluntary positions.
Small Blind: The player immediately to the left of the dealer puts in a small mandatory bet
Big Blind: The next player to the left puts in a bigger bet – usually double that of the small blind.
So if you’re playing a casual game, the small blind might throw in a dollar, and the big blind would step it up to $2. This then sets the stakes for the whole game – so, in our example, the minimum bet in the first round would be $2.
And don’t worry if you find yourself on the left of the dealer – the blinds rotate with every hand, so you’re not stuck shelling out for the entire game.
It might seem like a weird system, but it’s basically there to force action. Without the blinds, everyone could just sit around waiting for the perfect hand, which would take forever and be really boring. Because of the blinds, there’s something to lose – and a reason to give it the best with what you’ve got.
The blinds are in, and it’s time to raise the stakes. There are four rounds of betting and, no, you can’t just skip them if your hand is rubbish. Here’s how they work.
Everyone gets their two hole cards, but nobody sees the community cards just yet. Here’s where you size up your hole cards and consider your options. The player to the left of the big blind goes first. During your turn, you can do one of the following:
Once everyone’s either folded or matched the highest bet, the game continues.
Now, three community cards are dealt face-up in the middle of the table. Each player assesses how these relate to their hole cards, and makes another move based on how it’s looking. Generally, at least a few players will start to build solid hands here, and it’s where the tensions rise and those poker faces get more important.
The first active player to the dealer’s left starts, with all the same betting options available. If nobody places a bet, you can Check – no extra bet, but you stay in the game. Once everyone has completed their turn, we move on.
A fourth community card is placed in the middle of the table, triggering another round of betting. By this point, most players have either folded or committed – and if it’s the latter, they’ll be trying to convince you that they’ve made a good decision.
The same options are in play, but the stakes tend to start rising as players follow through on their bluffs – or their good luck.
The final community card is dealt. This is your last chance to improve your hand – or your acting skills. All the bet options are still available, but you’ll likely see more of the big bucks here as players try to make their last move count. Expect all-ins, and maybe a couple of sheepish checks and calls from less confident players.
You’ve placed your bets, now it’s time to face the music. If only one person is left standing, they automatically win – regardless of how good (or bad) their hand is. If there’s more than one, it’s time to reveal your cards, and the winner is the player with the best five-card hand.
Here’s an example round, just to let it all sink in.
Your hole cards are Ace of clubs and King of hearts. The flop brings a 10 of clubs and Jack of spades. The Turn is a Queen of diamonds and the River is a 3 of spades.
Your best hand is A-K-Q-J-10 – a straight. It’s pretty good, and you’re likely to bet high. But beware – if somebody else has a flush or a full house, you can say goodbye to your chips.
Let’s face facts – you can’t win if you don’t know what you’re looking for. And with so many combos available, it’s not easy to keep track of your options, especially if you’re new to poker. Here’s a breakdown of what to keep an eye out for, and what might indicate that you should cut your losses. We’ve ranked them from best to worst, so we don’t wanna hear “a pair! That’s good, right?” ever again.
Get the cheat sheet in a PDF for quick access – download it here!
A-K-Q-J-10 of the same suit.
The unicorn of poker hands. You’ll probably never see one, but it’s technically possible.
Eg: A♠K♠Q♠J♠10♠
Five cards in numerical order, of the same suit.
Like a straight, but with matching suits. You can feel pretty smug about this hand.
Eg: 6♥7♥8♥9♥10♥
Four cards of the same rank.
Look at you, collecting all the suits like Pokémon cards.
Eg: 8♥8♠8♣8♦3♣
Three of a kind, plus a pair.
A solid, dependable hand that wins more often than you might think.
Eg: 4♥4♠4♣Q♦Q♣
Five cards of the same suit, not in sequence.
It might look impressive but, five rungs down, there’s plenty of space to beat it.
Eg: 2♠6♠8♠Q♠A♠
Five cards in order, any suits.
Consistently good, but outshined by anything with matching suits.
Eg: 3♥4♠5♣6♦7♣
Three cards of the same rank.
Not bad, but not great. A middling hand that’s nothing to write home about.
Eg: J♣J♦J♥6♠2♣
Two separate pairs.
Very common, pretty easily beaten. Maybe not one to raise the bets on.
Eg: 2♥2♠9♠9♣J♦
Two cards of the same rank.
Barely anything, but technically considered a hand.
Eg: Q♦Q♣J♥6♠4♣
The best single card in your hand.
Really? You couldn’t even make a pair?? Bold of you to still be in at the showdown.
Eg: Q♣10♦5♣4♥2♠ – Queen is your best card
Obviously, the aim is to get as high up this list as possible. If two players have the same hand type, the winner is determined by the highest card in the hand. If you have the same highest card, it goes to the second highest, and so on.
You: Three of a Kind (J♣J♦J♥6♠2♣)
Them: Three of a Kind (8♠8♣8♥K♥7♣)
Your opponent wins, because their King is higher than any card in your hand.
You: Flush (2♠3♠6♠J♠Q♠)
Them: Flush (3♥4♥7♥8♥Q♥)
You win, because you have the same highest card (Queen), but your Jack is higher than their 8.
You know the rules. You understand what you’re looking for. But how do you improve your chances of winning?
Look, you’re not going to walk into your first game and bluff your way to the Poker Hall of Fame. But with a few smart strategies, you can learn to win more often, lose more gracefully, and make your opponents truly believe in beginner’s luck.
You don’t have to play every hand. In fact, you shouldn’t. It’s short-sighted and it’s not going to pay off.
When you do have a strong starting hand, learn to recognise it early on. Here are some patterns to spot:
On the flip side, know when your hand isn’t great, fold early and save your chips. Folding isn’t an admission of defeat, it’s a strategic decision.
Where you’re sitting in relation to the dealer changes the game completely. The later you act in the round, the more information you can glean from other players – and, in poker, information is power.
Blinds: Er, sorry, mate.
Early Position: Keep your play tight, you don’t know what’s coming.
Middle Position: Stay aware, and be careful – but use earlier players as a guide.
Late Position: You can afford to play a little wider, now you’ve seen everyone else act first.
Yeah, bluffing is a part of poker. But that doesn’t mean you need to do it on every hand. If anything, bluffing continuously will just familiarise your opponents with your bluff tactics and they’ll be able to catch you out quicker.
Instead, make sure your bluffs make sense. They should flow and tell a reasonable story about what you might have learnt through the betting rounds. If you’ve been checking each time and suddenly go all-in on the river, you’re not going to fool anyone.
Got a good hand? Bet strong. It puts the pressure on and raises the stakes, making the game more fun – but also increasing the pot when it gets to the showdown. It might even scare your opponents into folding, which is just a win for you.
Nobody wants to end up watching poker tutorials on YouTube at 3am with $0.32 in their account – but it can easily happen if you start chasing your losses.
Especially when you’re just starting out, it’s so important to set a budget before you start playing and stick to it. Poker isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, and you should only bet money that you’re prepared to lose. Besides, if you’re betting what you can’t afford, you’re more likely to be nervous – an easy tell for any regular poker player to spot and exploit.
It’s easy to get tunnel vision and focus on your cards, but this means you’re likely to miss what’s really important – the other players. You’re excited about a pair of Kings, but Barry across the table just raised again. Is it a bluff, or a great hand? Playing with the same people makes it easier to spot patterns, but you can catch insights from your opponents all the time – as long as you pay attention.
Poker is rarely about what you’re holding. It’s about what they’re holding – or, more importantly, what they want you to think they’re holding.
The art of reading other players is a combo of psychology, pattern recognition and good old-fashioned guesswork. Even the pros get it wrong sometimes, but you’ll get better at spotting the signs the more you play. There are plenty of subtle ways players give themselves away, even if you’re playing online.
Sitting around the table, you can get a good look at the other players. Sarah’s fiddling with her chips, Matt’s chewing the corner of his lip. It could all mean something, if you pay attention.
A few classic tells that come up time and again might include:
But people are complex, and good players often fake tells to mislead their opponents. Don’t rely on one gesture alone – look for patterns and inconsistencies to inform your game.
Sure, it’s more difficult to size up your opponent when you’re looking at a virtual screen. But don’t be disheartened – there are still ways to sniff out any suspicious behaviour.
Timing
Are they betting quickly, or suddenly taking ages? Quick bets normally mean confidence (or they’re set to automated bets). Longer pauses indicate indecision, so they might be weighing up their options. If they switch between betting rounds, something might have happened that changed the game for them.
Bet Sizing
Are they consistently checking or calling, then suddenly tripling the pot? They might have stumbled onto a winner and be looking to inflate the pot while they can. Or, they might have absolutely nothing and they’re trying to bluff their way out of it.
Auto-Checking
Always checking immediately means they might be on autopilot – or they’re distracted. Online poker is less immersive than being in the room, and players are less likely to be fully invested. Exploit that by staying at the top of your game.
Chatroom Chumps
Trashtalking in the group chat after every hand? It’s immature, it’s annoying, and it’s usually a coverup for mediocre skills. The loudest person in the room rarely leaves the richest.
While you can’t trust body language when you’re playing online, you can focus on rhythm. Spot the deviations, and you’ll start to gain that all-important edge.
Remember that, just as you’re doing your best to read the room, your opponents are working hard to read you. A strong hand is worthless if you’re an open book, so make sure you keep your own tells in check. Everybody’s got them, so it’s worth trying to work yours out – and squash them – nice and early.
Here are some top tips for flying under the radar, at the table or online:
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of what to do at the poker table. But it’s just as important to know what not to do – the habits that make seasoned players sigh, that instantly single you out as a newbie. And it’s not just your pride that can be damaged, it’s your bankroll, too.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s all about probability and, the truth is most hands are junk. Learn to fold, and never be afraid to pull out early. A bad hand is hard to build from.
You should have no excuse for this one, since you have our handy ranked PDF, but it’s still a common issue. Getting any named hand is exciting, but you don’t know what’s around the table. So maybe don’t go all in on your two pair, because there’s a fair chance that Simon opposite you is sitting on a full house.
It’s an obvious one, but one of the worst things you can do as a player is make it easy for your opponents to see right through you. Every hand should tell a logical story, and sudden big moves or inconsistencies are an easy way for the other players to smell a rat.
We’ve all done it, and it happens in poker more often than you’d think. You lose a big pot, you get annoyed and start calling with terrible hands just to prove a point. But as your therapist has probably told you, never make a decision in anger. You’ll make bad decisions, and the only person who loses is you. If you lose your head, take a break – before you lose your bankroll, too.
Bluffing is a tool, it’s not the whole game. If you’re bluffing too often, it becomes much more obvious – and people will notice. Instead, you should be bluffing when it adds to your story, rather than using it as a way of hiding. If you’re not confident you can bluff well, err on the side of caution.
Remember when we said table position matters? Still true. You can tell a new poker player a mile off when they play exactly the same in an early position as in a later one. You need a level of nuance to succeed with poker, and your game should change at every table position.
The rounds aren’t played in isolation – you have to remember what’s already happened. Who raised last time? Are they displaying any patterns this time? If you’re not paying attention to the entire history of the hand, you might as well hand in your chips now.
You can have the rules, the hands and strategy nailed – but if you’re a nightmare to play with, nobody’s going to invite you back to the table.
Poker is more than a game of skill, it’s a social occasion that has brought people together for centuries. The rules of the table are pretty similar to classic playground rules – use common sense, play fair, and don’t be a jerk.
| Poker Table Dos | Poker Table Don’ts |
|---|---|
| Do Wait Your Turn | Don’t Talk After Folding |
| We get it, you’re excited. But acting out of turn throws everyone off and could give away information that changes how people play their hand. Don’t be that person. | If you’ve folded, fine – now zip it. Don’t mention what you folded, or how your game could have gone – at best, it’s annoying, and at worst, it can ruin the hand for those still in. |
| Do Stack Your Chips | Don’t Distract The Table |
| It’s a poker table, not a bar fight. ‘Splashing the pot’, or throwing your chips in the middle, doesn’t make you look cool. It just makes it harder to track the bets. So be an adult and stack your chips neatly. | Even in a casual game, don’t be disrespectful. Always checking your phone, blaring music, or chatting during hands will slow the game down and make you look like you have the attention span of a bug. |
| Do Win (Or Lose) Gracefully | Don’t Talk Through Your Thoughts |
| Won the showdown? Don’t slow roll or gloat. But don’t go flipping the table because you didn’t catch your flush, either. If you can’t handle the big wins or losses, maybe take up Uno instead. | Caught onto someone’s tell? Great, well done – but don’t go telling everyone. Firstly, you’ve won yourself an advantage, and telling everyone ruins that. Secondly, it’s bad form – let the others figure things out themselves. |
Congratulations – you’ve made it to the end of Poker For Dummies without folding under the pressure. You now know how to play the most popular type of poker, how to understand your hand, how to read the room and – most importantly – how to do it all without annoying everyone else.
Are you ready to bluff your way through the World Series? No – if we had the skills to teach you that, do you think we’d be sitting here writing blog posts? But you should now be able to hold your own at poker night and not immediately get fleeced by your mate who used to work behind the bar at his local casino.
The thing is, poker isn’t about mastering everything overnight – in fact, that’s kind of the beauty of it. You need so much more than an understanding of the cards, and not everything can be taught. It’s about building a toolkit of strategies, observations, gut feelings and straight-up experience, and learning how to use it well. We’ve given you the toolbox, but you’ll need to try it out yourself to start filling it up.
So next time you sit down at the table, whether it’s a casual game among friends or your first online tournament, remember:
And never, ever, go all-in on a pair of twos. It’s not going to work out for you.
Good luck out there – and don’t forget to download our poker hands ranking cheat sheet to keep you informed when you need it most.
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