The chips are money. You buy in for a slice of your bankroll and the stack in front of you is worth exactly what it says. Cash out whenever you like and it goes straight back — there is no finish line to reach first.
The blinds never move — currently $2 / $5. Nothing is chasing you, which is the real difference from the tournament next door: you can fold for an hour and it costs you only the blinds.
This table is playing Omaha Hi, pot limit. Four cards each, and exactly two of them play — not "up to two". Your flush needs two cards of that suit in your hand however many are on the board, and a lone ace with four spades out there is not a flush at all. Every hand is two from your four and three from the five in the middle, and the table names it that way at showdown.
No bet may be bigger than the pot. The most you can raise to is what is in the middle after you have called: your call goes in first, and then you may bet that. Preflop at $2/$5 with the blinds alone that is a raise to $17. The slider and the buttons already stop there — you cannot ask for more.
Hold any seat to open its hand out. Four overlapped cards are readable but not comfortable, and at showdown you want to see exactly what beat you.
This table is playing Texas Hold'em, no limit. Two cards each, the best five of the seven, and you may put your whole stack in whenever it is your turn.
Every number on this table is a whole dollar. The house does not make change, so nothing here ever produces one — not a bet, not a pot, not a split.
The minimum bet is the big blind, and a raise is the casino minimum: the last raise again on top of the current bet. So the first raise of a street is a double, and every one after it goes up by at least as much as the one before.
One question decides what they show: is there a bet in front of you?
If there is — multiples of that bet. 2× 3× 4× 5× 10×. Facing $17 they raise to $34, $51, $68, $85, $170. This is the whole story before the flop too, because there the bet in front of you is the big blind — so an unraised pot at $2/$5 gives $10, $15, $20, $25, $50, and a straddled one measures off the straddle instead: $20, $30, $40, $50, $100. 2× is always the legal minimum or a shade above it, so there is no separate Min button here.
If there is not — fractions of the pot. Min ½ ¾ Pot 2×Pot, which you only see after the flop, since before it somebody has always posted a blind. Into a $34 pot: $5, $15, $25, $35, $70.
Which is how the game is actually spoken — nobody says "I bet half the pot" before the flop, and nobody says "I raise to 5x" on the river. A pot-sized raise is not "the pot": it is call first, then bet the pot that calling creates, which is why a pot raise over the blinds at $2/$5 comes to $17 before rounding, not $7.
Whole dollars are not enough on their own — a pot-sized raise can still come out at $17 or $43, and nobody at a live table announces forty-three. So every raise is rounded to the nearest big blind: to $5 at $2/$5, $10 at $5/$10, $25 at $10/$25, $50 at $25/$50. The unit is the blind rather than a fixed amount because that is what scales with the chips in front of you.
Nearest, not up. At $2/$5, $17 becomes $15 and $43 becomes $45; a tie goes up. It applies wherever the number came from — a button, the slider, or a bot — because the server does the rounding, not the browser.
An all-in is the one exception, as it is in every poker room: you may always put your last chip in whatever number it lands on. Your shove is the stack floored to $5, which above $5/$10 is rarely a multiple of the blind, and it goes in exactly as it stands.
A button whose number could not survive — pushed up to the legal minimum, or down to your all-in — is dimmed, so you can see at a glance that pressing it will not do what its label says.
An all-in is your stack rounded down to $5. Shove $49 and $45 goes in — the odd $4 stays in front of you, dead: it cannot be bet, called or won, and you cannot be dealt in again until you top back up. The bet bar says the number before you press the button.
A split pot is divided in whole dollars and the odd dollar goes to the player nearest the button's left. A $100 pot three ways is $34 / $33 / $33, and the $34 goes to the small blind — the seat that had to act first all hand.
Buy in for 40 to 100 big blinds, and top back up to the maximum between any two hands. Lose the lot and you can reload and carry on.
Players come and go. Somebody who busts will usually reach for their wallet, but not always; somebody who has doubled up may decide to book the win. Empty chairs fill with new faces. When a player leaves you are told what they were — that is the only time you ever find out, so it is worth having formed an opinion first.
The straddle, if the table has it on, is a live blind of two big blinds posted before the deal, and it comes from one of two seats. The button gets first refusal; under the gun is only offered it if the button turns it down, and there is never more than one in a hand.
The two are not the same bet. Straddle under the gun and you have paid double to play the worst seat at the table — all you buy is the last word before the flop. Straddle the button and the order of the whole hand changes: the small blind has to speak first into a doubled pot with nothing to go on, and you have the last word before the flop and on every street after it. That one is close enough to worth it that it is the straddle you will actually see posted.
You have 30 seconds to act. Run out and you check if it is free, otherwise you fold.
No rake. A real room takes a cut of every pot, which is most of the reason beating a live game is hard. This one does not — the exercise here is reading players, not overcoming a levy.
Every opponent is dealt a hidden playing style, and you are not told which. Some enter most pots and bluff the river around 40% of the time; some fold a lot and almost never bluff — when one of those bets the river, believe it.
The difference from a tournament is that your reads expire. The seat you had worked out is going to get up and be replaced by somebody you know nothing about, and the read starts again.
Shortcuts: F fold · C check or call · R raise · Enter next hand