Introduction to Poker Betting Rules
The purpose of the betting rounds is to have all the players who want a chance at the pot contribute equal amounts of money to it. The player who starts the betting round varies by game: in Hold'em, it's always the player to the dealer's left, and in Stud, it depends on the cards the players have showing. The betting proceeds clockwise, with each player using his turn to either (1)match the amount of the bet coming to him, (2) increase the amount of the bet, or (3) drop out of the hand. These three choices, when applied to the circumtances of the betting, result in five possible actions that players can take: Check, Bet, Call, Raise, and Fold.
Betting is complete when every player has had the chance to act and all bets/raises have been called by the players still in the hand. There are a handful of rules that you must observe during betting:
1. Players must act in turn.
2. You must allow check-raising (when a player checks and then raises after another player bets). Some home game players outlaw check-raising because they think it is somehow sneaky or dishonest, a curious concern in a game that is based on fooling your opponents. Poker without check-raising is like football without tackling. Don't be a sissy.
3. In games where players can choose the amounts of their bets, the amount of a raise must be equal to or greater than the last bet or raise. (This rule is moot in fixed-limit.) The exception is a player who goes all-in, who can increase the bet with his remaining chips, even if that falls below the last bet amount.
4. You should have a maximum number of raises, called a cap. A cap of three raises is typical. This rule is in place to prevent players who may be working together from re-raising each other indefinitely only to pull along a third player.
5. If a player goes all-in to make a bet or a raise that is less than the fixed amount, subsequent players who want to stay in only have to call the partial amount. The way you handle a later raise depends on the amount of the partial bet:
- If the partial amount of the bet or raise is half or more of the fixed amount, then a subsequent raise adds a full fixed amount to the bet, and that raise counts against the cap. Consider a betting round with amounts fixed at $2. If Player A opens for $2 and Player B raises all-in to $3, then a re-raise from Player C would make the bet $5 to go. There would be two raises counted against the cap.
- If the partial amount is less than half the fixed amount, then the next player who wants to increase the bet can only complete the bet to the fixed amount. This action does not count against the cap. To modify the example above, if Player A opens for $2 and Player B raises all-in to only $2.50, then a re-raise from Player C could only complete the raise to $4. There would only be one raise counted against the cap in this case.
-This next rule is less well-known than it should be. An all-in bet or raise that is less than the fixed amount does not, by itself, entitle a player who already acted to raise. Suppose there are three players remaining in a $2 fixed-limit betting round. If player A checks, Player B opens all-in for $.50, and Player C calls, then Player A can't raise. Even though it is player A's action and the bet has been increased, it wasn't technically a complete bet, since the increase was less than half the fixed amount. That means if Player A raised, he would essentially be raising his own check. If Player C had completed Player B's bet to $2, that action would have allowed Player A to raise. We've seen this rule interpreted sloppily in poker rooms to prohibit a player from check-raising after another player bets all-in. This rule can prohibit that, but it depends on the amount of the all-in bet and what happens afterward.