Texas hold 'em
Texas hold 'em is the most popular variant of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards, later an additional single card, and a final card. Each player seeks the best five-card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards: the five community cards and their two hole cards. Players have betting options to check, call, raise, or fold. Rounds of betting take place before the flop is dealt and after each subsequent deal. The player who has the best hand and has not folded by the end of all betting rounds wins all of the money bet for the hand, known as the pot. In certain situations, a "split pot" or "tie" can occur when two players have hands of equivalent value. This is also called "chop the pot". Texas hold 'em is also the H game featured in HORSE and HOSE.
Objective
In Texas hold 'em, as in all variants of poker, individuals compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves. Because the cards are dealt randomly and outside the control of the players, each player attempts to control the amount of money in the pot based on the hand they are holding,and on their prediction as to what their opponents may be holding and how they might behave.
The game is divided into a series of hands ; at the conclusion of each hand, the pot is typically awarded to one player. A hand may end at [|the showdown], in which case the remaining players compare their hands and the highest hand is awarded the pot; that highest hand is usually held by only one player, but can be held by more in the case of a tie. The other possibility for the conclusion of a hand occurs when all but one player have folded and have thereby abandoned any claim to the pot, in which case the pot is awarded to the player who has not folded.
The objective of winning players is not to win every individual hand, but rather to win over the longer term by making mathematically and psychologically better decisions regarding when and how much to bet, raise, call or fold. Winning poker players work to enhance their opponents' betting and maximize their own expected gain on each round of betting, to thereby increase their long-term winnings.
History
Although little is known about the invention of Texas hold 'em, the Texas Legislature officially recognizes Robstown, Texas, as the game's birthplace, dating it to the early 20th century.After the game spread throughout Texas, hold 'em was introduced to Las Vegas in 1963 at the California Club by Corky McCorquodale. The game became popular and quickly spread to the Golden Nugget, Stardust and Dunes. In 1967, a group of Texan gamblers and card players, including Crandell Addington, Doyle Brunson, and Amarillo Slim were playing in Las Vegas. This is when "ace high" was changed from the original form in which aces were low. Addington said the first time he saw the game was in 1959. "They didn't call it Texas hold 'em at the time, they just called it hold 'em.… I thought then that if it were to catch on, it would become the game. Draw poker, you bet only twice; hold 'em, you bet four times. That meant you could play strategically. This was more of a thinking man's game."
For several years the Golden Nugget Casino in Downtown Las Vegas was the only casino in Las Vegas to offer the game. At that time, the Golden Nugget's poker room was "truly a 'sawdust joint,' with…oiled sawdust covering the floors." Because of its location and decor, this poker room did not receive many rich drop-in clients, and as a result, professional players sought a more prominent location. In 1969, the Las Vegas professionals were invited to play Texas hold 'em at the entrance of the now-demolished Dunes Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. This prominent location, and the relative inexperience of poker players with Texas hold 'em, resulted in a very remunerative game for professional players.
After a failed attempt to establish a "Gambling Fraternity Convention", Tom Moore added the first ever poker tournament to the Second Annual Gambling Fraternity Convention held in 1969. This tournament featured several games, including Texas hold 'em. In 1970, Benny and Jack Binion acquired the rights to this convention, renamed it the World Series of Poker, and moved it to their casino, Binion's Horseshoe, in Las Vegas. After its first year, a journalist, Tom Thackrey, suggested that the main event of this tournament should be no-limit Texas hold 'em. The Binions agreed and ever since no-limit Texas hold 'em has been played as the main event. Interest in the main event continued to grow steadily over the next two decades. After receiving only eight entrants in 1972, the numbers grew to over one hundred entrants in 1982, and over two hundred in 1991.
During this time, B & G Publishing Co., Inc. published Doyle Brunson's revolutionary poker strategy guide, Super/System. Despite being self-published and priced at $100 in 1978, the book revolutionized the way poker was played. It was one of the first books to discuss Texas hold 'em, and is today cited as one of the most important books on this game. In 1983, Al Alvarez published The Biggest Game in Town, a book detailing a 1981 World Series of Poker event. The first book of its kind, it described the world of professional poker players and the World Series of Poker. Alvarez's book is credited with beginning the genre of poker literature and with bringing Texas hold 'em to a wider audience.
Alvarez's book was not the first book about poker. The Education of a Poker Player, by Herbert Yardley, a former U.S. government code breaker, was published in 1957.
Interest in hold 'em outside of Nevada began to grow in the 1980s as well. Although California had legal card rooms offering draw poker, Texas hold 'em was deemed to be prohibited under a statute that made illegal the game "stud-horse". But in 1988 Texas hold 'em was declared legally distinct from stud-horse in Tibbetts v. Van De Kamp, and declared to be a game of skill. Almost immediately card rooms across the state offered Texas hold 'em. It is often presumed that this decision ruled that hold 'em was a game of skill, but the distinction between skill and chance has never entered into California jurisprudence regarding poker.
After a trip to Las Vegas, bookmakers Terry Rogers and Liam Flood introduced the game to European card players in the early 1980s.
Popularity
Texas hold 'em is currently the most popular form of poker. Texas hold 'em's popularity surged in the 2000s due to exposure on television, the Internet and popular literature. During this time, hold 'em replaced seven-card stud as the most common game in U.S. casinos. The no-limit betting form is used in the widely televised main event of the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.Hold 'em's simplicity and popularity have inspired a wide variety of strategy books that provide recommendations for proper play. Most of these books recommend a strategy that involves playing relatively few hands but betting and raising often with the hands one plays.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Texas hold 'em experienced a surge in popularity worldwide. Many observers attribute this growth to the synergy of five factors: the invention of online poker, the game's appearance in film and on television, invention and usage of the "hole card cam", the appearance of television commercials advertising online cardrooms, and the 2003 World Series of Poker championship victory by online qualifier Chris Moneymaker.
Television and film
Prior to poker becoming widely televised, the movie Rounders, starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton, gave moviegoers a romantic view of the game as a way of life despite the poker portrayed being often criticized by more serious players. Texas hold 'em was the main game played during the movie and the no-limit variety was described, following Doyle Brunson, as the "Cadillac of Poker". A clip of the classic showdown between Johnny Chan and Erik Seidel from the 1988 World Series of Poker was also incorporated into the film. More recently, a high-stakes Texas hold 'em game was central to the plot of the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, in place of baccarat, the casino game central to the novel of the same name on which the film was based. In 2008, an acclaimed short film called Shark Out of Water was released on DVD. This film is unique in that it deals with the darker, more addictive elements of the game, and features Phil Hellmuth and Brad Booth.Hold 'em tournaments had been televised since the late 1970s, but they did not become popular until 1999, when hidden lipstick cameras were first used to show players' private hole cards on the Late Night Poker TV show in the United Kingdom. Hold 'em exploded in popularity as a spectator sport in the United States and Canada in early 2003, when the World Poker Tour adopted the lipstick cameras idea. A few months later, ESPN's coverage of the 2003 World Series of Poker featured the unexpected victory of Internet player Chris Moneymaker, an amateur player who gained admission to the tournament by winning a series of online tournaments. Moneymaker's victory initiated a sudden surge of interest in the series, based on the egalitarian idea that anyone—even a rank novice—could become a world champion.
In 2003, there were 839 entrants in the WSOP main event, and triple that number in 2004. The crowning of the 2004 WSOP champion, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, a patent attorney from Connecticut, further fueled the popularity of the event among amateur players. In the 2005 main event, an unprecedented 5,619 entrants vied for a first prize of $7,500,000. The winner, Joe Hachem of Australia, was a semi-professional player. This growth continued in 2006, with 8,773 entrants and a first place prize of $12,000,000.
Beyond the series, other television shows—including the long running World Poker Tour—are credited with increasing the popularity of Texas hold 'em. In addition to its presence on network and general audience cable television, poker has now become a regular part of sports networks' programming in the United States.