Texas-Holdem-Lab · How to play

The idea

Each player gets two private cards (your "hole cards"). Five community cards are revealed face-up in the middle, in stages. You make the best 5-card poker hand using any combination of your two hole cards plus the five community cards. Whoever has the best hand at showdown — or whoever's still in the hand when everyone else has folded — wins the pot.

A hand, step by step

Blinds. The player left of the dealer button posts the small blind (e.g. 5); next-left posts the big blind (e.g. 10). Heads-up the button posts SB. These are forced bets to seed the pot.
Deal. Everyone gets two hole cards face-down.
Preflop betting. Action starts left of the big blind (heads-up: button acts first). Each player can fold, call the BB, or raise.
Flop. Three community cards revealed. Postflop betting starts with the first live player left of the button (heads-up: BB acts first).
Turn. One more community card. Another betting round.
River. Final community card. Final betting round.
Showdown. If two or more players are still in, hands are compared. Best 5-card hand wins. (If everyone but one folds before showdown, that one wins without showing.)

Actions you can take

Action	When	Key
Fold	always available — you give up your cards and leave the hand	`F`
Check	no bet to face — pass action without putting in chips	`K`
Call	match the current bet	`C`
Bet	no current bet — put chips in (min = BB)	`R`
Raise	there's a bet — increase it (min raise = previous raise size)	`R`
All-in	push your entire stack — sometimes the only legal raise when short	`A`

Hand rankings (best → worst)

1Straight flush10♥ 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥

2Four of a kindK♠ K♣ K♦ K♥ Q♣

3Full houseA♥ A♦ A♠ 7♥ 7♦

4FlushA♠ J♠ 9♠ 6♠ 3♠

5Straight9♣ 8♥ 7♣ 6♦ 5♠

6Three of a kindQ♥ Q♦ Q♣ 7♠ 4♥

7Two pairA♣ A♦ 8♠ 8♥ 3♣

8PairJ♠ J♥ 9♣ 6♦ 2♠

9High cardA♥ Q♠ 9♣ 7♦ 4♣

5 tips for beginners

Position is power. Acting last lets you see what others did first. Play tighter (fewer hands) when out of position, looser when in position.
Most starting hands are bad. Pairs, big aces (AK, AQ), and suited connectors (89s) are good. Random offsuit junk like 7♣ 2♦ should fold preflop almost always.
Pot odds. If the pot is 90 and you need to call 30 to win it, you're getting 3:1 — call as long as your equity is at least ~25%.
Don't slow-play strong hands too much. If you flop a set, betting builds the pot. Trapping is hard against multiple opponents.
Bluffing isn't free. Pick spots where the board hits your range and missed your opponent's. Bluffing into multiple callers usually loses money.

About the bot

Texas-Holdem-Lab's default opponent uses a mix of the Chen formula (for preflop hand strength) and Monte Carlo equity calculation against a random opponent range (for postflop), modulated by pot odds and position. There's also an LLM mode that asks Claude to reason about each spot. Want to plug in your own decision engine? Head to Arena — register an HTTP endpoint and we'll send game state to it whenever it's your seat's turn.