Betting rules

An essential part of playing Poker is knowing and understanding the stakes for the game being played.

The rules relating to antes and maximum / minimum bets and raises determine whether or not you can afford to play in a game. In addition, they will affect the way you play a hand, or indeed an entire session.

In modern Poker, virtually all high and moderate stakes games are played with “table stakes.”

Table stakes ensure that a player can never be forced out of a game because they lack the financial resources to bet, even though they may have a winning hand.

If a player has gone all in, i.e., they have no more cash or chips, subsequent bets are placed into a side pot. If the all-in player wins, they collect the contents of the original pot. Meanwhile the remaining players battle for the side pot. Naturally, if one of these players beats the remaining players as well as the player who has gone all-in they take the lot, and the player who went all in is out of the game.