Let’s start at the beginning. Texas hold’em is a fast-paced, high-octane community-card game and the most popular form of poker played today. The aim is to make the best five-card hand from any combination of the two private ‘hole’ cards that you are dealt face down, and the five ‘community’ cards dealt face up which everyone uses. We’ll go through the play of a hand shortly – as well as all four rounds of betting – but first you need to know about the ‘dealer button’ and the ‘blinds’.The dealer button

Dealing cards and betting always go clockwise. Each hand, one player gets the dealer button – a small object that looks like a hockey puck and, handily, has ‘dealer’ written on it.

The deal and the action start to the left of who has the button, which moves round one player each hand to make everything equal overall.