How to play

The game in a minute

Texas Hold’em. Everyone gets two cards face down. Five more are dealt face up in the middle, shared by all: three at once (the flop), then one (the turn), then one (the river). There is a round of betting before the flop and after each card. Make the best five-card hand you can from your two and the five on the table — using both of yours, one, or none.

You win a hand two ways: everyone else folds, or you show the best hand at the end. Most hands end the first way. That is the game.

The table

Hold’em tables seat nine; every other game seats seven. The dealer sits at the far rail. You are always drawn at the bottom of the screen, and everyone else is placed around you.

The button (D) marks the dealer position for this hand. It moves one seat to the left each hand.
SB and BB are the small and big blinds: forced bets from the two seats after the button, posted before any card is dealt. The big blind is the table’s base bet. If nobody raises, the big blind gets the option to check or raise.
The timer. You have 15 seconds to act. Run out, and the table checks for you if that is free, or folds you if you owe chips — it never calls for you. Three timeouts in a row and you are sat out, so the table stops waiting.
Sit out keeps your seat and your chips but deals you out until you sit back in. Leave table takes your chips back to your balance.
Add chips can be pressed during a hand, but the chips arrive at the next deal. A stack that grows mid-hand would change the odds everyone else already bet against.
A disconnect is treated exactly like a timeout. No grace period, because extra time for a dropped connection is extra time nobody else gets, and it cannot be told apart from pulling the plug on purpose.

Your turn

The buttons are the same order every time:

Fold — give up the hand and anything you have put in.
Check — pass without betting. Only offered when you owe nothing.
Call — match the current bet. Only offered when you owe something.
Raise — opens a slider. Set the amount, then press Confirm. The smallest raise is one full bet more than the last one.
All in — every chip you have, in one go.

You can never bet more than you have on the table. Calling with less than the bet puts you all-in for what you have, and you stay in the hand for the part of the pot you could match.

Deciding early

While you wait for your turn, the same row shows tick boxes: Fold, Check/Fold, Check, Call. Tick one and it plays for you the moment the action reaches you. Check/Fold checks if that is free and folds if not. Check disappears the moment somebody bets, because it stops being possible. Untick by pressing again.

Hand rankings

Best to worst. Every hand is exactly five cards.

Royal flushA, K, Q, J, 10, all one suit. The best hand there is.
Straight flushFive in a row, all one suit. 9-8-7-6-5 of hearts.
Four of a kindAll four of one rank. Four nines.
Full houseThree of one rank and two of another. Three kings and two fours.
FlushAny five of one suit. The highest card decides between two flushes.
StraightFive in a row, suits mixed. An ace can sit at the top (10-J-Q-K-A) or the bottom (A-2-3-4-5), never in the middle.
Three of a kindThree of one rank.
Two pairTwo of one rank and two of another.
One pairTwo of one rank.
High cardNone of the above. The highest card plays, then the next.

Ties. Same rank of hand, and the higher cards win: a pair of kings beats a pair of tens; two pairs of kings are decided by the next card, the kicker. Two hands that are exactly equal split the pot. Suits never break a tie.

Pots and side pots

The pot is everything bet in the hand. When a player is all-in for less than the others keep betting, the pot splits into a main pot and a side pot, and one rule decides everything:

A player can only win the chips they could have lost.

Say Alice is all-in for 50 and Bob and Carol each put in 200. The main pot is 150 (50 from each of three players); anyone can win it. The side pot is 300 (the extra 150 from Bob and Carol); only Bob and Carol can win it. If Alice has the best hand she wins 150, and the 300 goes to the better of Bob and Carol. Several all-ins make several side pots, settled smallest first.

Chips you bet that nobody could match come back to you at the end of the hand. Nothing ever disappears: what goes in comes out, every hand.

Showdown

If two or more players are still in after the river betting, cards are compared. The player who made the last bet shows first; if everyone checked, the first player after the button shows first.

Showing is optional — you can muck a losing hand without revealing it — with one exception: the winner must show. Nobody wins a contested pot with an unseen hand.

The result appears in the middle of the table: who won, what with, and the cards that made it. When a pot splits, the winners sit side by side, biggest share first, numbered.

The games

Texas Hold’em: Two cards each. Use both, one or none of them with the five on the board. Nine seats.
OG Omaha: Four cards each. Your hand must use exactly two of them — never one, never three — with three from the board. Four cards make six two-card combinations, so everyone connects with the board far more often than in Hold’em; a hand that wins at Hold’em is often second best here. Seven seats.
Omaha (5 Cards) VIP: Five cards each; still exactly two of them with three from the board. More cards to choose from means bigger winning hands, and a hand that felt safe in OG Omaha is often beaten.
Omaha (3 Cards) VIP: Four cards each, but your hand must use exactly threeof them with only two from the board. That flips what you are used to: a paired board is worth much less, a flush needs three of the suit in your own hand, and your cards decide more of the hand than the felt does.
Omaha (Open Flop): Everyone pays the big blind before the deal and the flop comes out straight away — there is no betting before it. Four cards, use exactly two, as in OG Omaha from the flop onward. You never get to fold for free, so play tighter than the price suggests; so is everyone else who has already paid.
3 Sets VIP: Six cards each and three boards, A, B and C. Everyone pays the big blind and all three flops come at once; bet after the flop, the turn and the river. Then 60 seconds to lay two of your six cards on each board (if the clock runs out: cards 1–2 to A, 3–4 to B, 5–6 to C). One more round, then A, B and C are shown down in turn, each judged like Omaha and worth a point. Most points takes the pot; ties share. Six seats. Free to try in the practice room.
Random VIP: Every three hands a wheel spins and picks a game: OG Omaha, 5 Cards, 3 Cards, Open Flop or 3 Sets. The pill at the top of the screen says which game you are in and which hand of the three. The wheel is decided by the server, with the same randomness as the shuffle, before it starts turning; what it lands on is what is dealt. When it lands, the new game’s rule is shown for a few seconds before the cards come.

The numbers under your cards

Whenever you hold live cards, a percentage sits under them: to win. It is your share of the pot if the hand were played out many times from here, counting a split as a part win. It is worked out from your cards and the board only — your opponents are treated as random unknown hands, never their real ones — and it is estimated by simulation, so treat it as a guide, not a verdict. Press it for the detail: how often you win outright, how often you split, and your outs.

On the river, when every card is out, the percentage can be replaced by one word: NUTS. It means you hold the best hand possible on this board. Nobody can beat you; at most they can tie. Unlike the percentage, this is exact: every hand anyone could hold has been checked against yours.

The odds disappear when you fold, at showdown, and between hands.

Rake

The house never plays. It takes a small cut of each pot instead: 5%, capped at three big blinds, taken before the winner is paid. If a hand ends before the flop, nothing is taken. The amount is shown under the pot whenever it applies, so a pot that does not add up can be checked rather than wondered about.

Fair dealing, and how to check it

Before any card is dealt, the server publishes a fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash) of the secret seed that will shuffle the deck. Once the hand is over, it releases the seed itself. Because the seed determines the whole shuffle, and the fingerprint could not have been changed after the fact, anyone can re-run the shuffle and confirm the cards dealt are the ones the server committed to before it knew who would bet what.

The small fair mark at the top of the table opens the current hand’s commitment. Every finished hand in your history has a verify page that does the check for you and shows its working, so you can repeat it yourself.

Chips, tiers, rewards and VIP

Chips are for play. They have no cash value, cannot be bought back, and cannot be traded between players. You start with 5,000, and a once-a-day refill of 1,000 if you ever cannot buy in. A daily bonus grows across five consecutive days, and the rewards page lists tasks — hands played, hands won, showdowns reached — that pay chips when done.

Tiers follow your balance, and rewards grow with your tier (up to five times the base). The badge before your name at the table is your tier:

RRookiefrom the start
RgRegularfrom 25,000
GGrinderfrom 1,25,000
SSharkfrom 5,00,000
RdRounderfrom 25,00,000
HRHigh Rollerfrom 1,25,00,000
LLegendfrom 5,00,00,000

VIP is a membership, ₹100 a month: ten times the rewards, the 5-card and 3-card Omahas, and a gold tag at the table. See what it includes. Reaching Legend is the top of the ladder; VIP is separate from it.

Glossary

Blinds: The two forced bets that start every hand, posted by the two seats after the button. The big blind is the table's base bet; the small blind is half of it.
Button: The dealer position, marked D. It moves one seat left after every hand, so everyone takes turns posting blinds and acting last.
Position: Where you sit relative to the button. Acting after other players is an advantage: you see what they do first.
Equity: Poker's word for your chances, as a share of the pot. If you would win three pots out of ten from here, your equity is 30%. It is the percentage under your cards.
Outs: Cards still in the deck that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
Nuts: The best hand possible on this board. If you hold it, nobody can beat you; at most they can tie.
Kicker: The spare card that decides between two hands of the same rank. Two players with a pair of aces: the higher second card wins.
Side pot: A separate pot that forms when someone is all-in for less than the others keep betting. A player can only win what they could have lost.
Muck: To fold at showdown without showing your cards.
All-in: Every chip you have on the table, in one action. You cannot be forced out of a hand you are all-in on; you just cannot win more than you put in.
Check-raise: Checking, letting someone bet, then raising them. Legal, and a classic way of hiding strength.
Pot odds: The price of a call against the size of the pot. Calling 100 into a pot of 400 is 4 to 1: you need to win one time in five to break even.

House rules

One account per person. Chips never move between accounts.
Two players sharing information or soft-playing each other is collusion. It is the one thing that ruins a table for everyone, and it gets both accounts closed.
Be decent at the table. Chat is for the game, and any player can be reported from their seat.
Five reports, from five different players, is a strike. The first strike suspends the account for three days. The second closes it for good. This is applied automatically; nobody has to decide it, and nobody can waive it.
If something looks wrong — a pot that does not add up, a card that should not have been there — every hand has a record. Open it from your history before assuming, and tell us if it does not add up either.