Texas Holdem

The most popular poker variation, Texas Hold’em is the game you’ve most likely seen on TV of in the movies. With two hidden hole cards and five exposed "community" cards, Hold’em is packed with great action and strategy and there’s always a game available online, whatever your stakes or skill level. If you’re just getting started playing Texas Hold’em, we recommend checking out some basic articles that give you a simple understanding of the rules and etiquette of the game and a few tips for solid beginner strategy. Read more about the Texas Holdem rules and game play and some tips on Texas Holdem betting on our Rules page. To get started online, check out our ranking and reviews of the best Texas Holdem sites below.

Best Rooms to Play Texas Holdem

Tournaments

Incredibly popular over the last 10 years, poker tournaments of all shape and form appeal to poker players for several reasons. To start with, the return on your investment is always remarkable huge compared to your investment. In a small-stakes tournament you can turn a $1 or $2 buy-in into several hundred with a luck run of cards. In a larger buy-in tournament, like the Sunday Million on PokerStars, you could turn $215 into $200,000. It’s that kind of potential that keeps players coming back for more and more – not to mention the fact that if the cards don't go your way, you konw exactly how much you stand to lose (not much). Multi-table tournaments, sit-and-gos (one-table tournaments that start as soon as the table is full), double-or-nothings, shootouts … the number of tournament variations these days is massive and always growing. Poker sites below are ranked on their overall tournament selection, starting frequency, freerolls, multi-table tournaments, sit-and-gos, live-event satellites and more. For a basic primer on tournament rules and strategy, visit our strategy section.

Best Rooms to Play Tournaments

Heads-Up Poker

Pitting you against a single opponent in head-to-head competition, heads-up poker is poker in its purest form. If you’ve ever made it all the way to the final two players in a tournament, you know just how much your strategy and your playing style changes when you get down to the end. Hand values, betting strategies and how you play each street can change dramatically in heads-up play compared to earlier in the tournament – even against the same player. Heads-up play requires such specific strategy that some online poker pros even make their living entirely in heads-up sit-and-gos or heads-up cash games. Some of the very best pros in the world, in fact, are known for their heads-up prowess including Tom Dwan, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Isaac Haxton. Heads-up games are available at all stakes and skill levels though, so give it a try. With only two players at the table, you’re guaranteed to never be short of action.

Best Rooms to Play Heads-Up Poker

Omaha

If Texas Hold’em poker is considered “high-action” poker, Omaha has to be considered “really high action” poker. Growing a ton in popularity over the last few years, Omaha poker is similar to Texas Hold’em in rules and betting structures but has one major difference: In Omaha you get four hole cards compared to two in Hold’em - although you can still only use two to comprise your final hand. Given the amount of added variables and hand combinations with four hole cards instead of two, you can see how Omaha has action potential on every street. Pot-Limit Omaha is probably the most popular Omaha variant online. You can find out more about its betting structure and game play in our Rules section and check out our beginner strategy series “How to Not Suck at Pot-Limit Omaha.”

Best Rooms to Play Omaha

Stud Poker

The preferred game of poker traditionalists, Stud poker is the game you used to see in TV shows and movies Played with five cards or seven cards, Stud was the game of choice for most of poker’s history – at least until Texas Holdem exploded on the scene in the early 2000s. Still a popular game with a die-hard fan base, Stud Poker is a game with great nuance and a need for multi-level math and player-reading ability. In short, it’s tough to be great at it, which is why most new players gravitate towards Hold’em. Well, that and the action. The rules in Stud are fairly simple. In seven-card stud each player is dealt two cards face down and one face up. After the bring-in (a forced bet made by the smallest card showing) and a betting round, the next three cards are dealt face up with a betting round after each. The final card is then dealt face down. Best five-card hand wins the pot. Check out more on Stud Poker’s rules and game play on our Rules page. While it’s slightly harder to find a Stud game online, these sites below are your best bets.

Best Rooms to Play Stud Poker

Razz

Razz Poker is essentially Seven-Card Stud in reverse - meaning instead of the highest possible hand winning the pot, the lowest possible hand wins the pot. Outside of three small differences Razz plays exactly the same as Seven-Card Stud. Those three differences are the player who must bring in the action at the start of the first betting round, the player who must start the action on any given street and how to decide the winning hand at showdown (meaning lowest instead of highest hand). in Razz the best possible hand is A-2-3-4-5 (with aces low and straights and flushes null and void). Razz is also usually played with fixed betting limits. It's not always easy to find a game online these days, but if there is it's likely at PokerStars. Despite its lack of popularity, Razz isn't going away any time soon though as it's still a bracelet event at the World Series of Poker and featured in several mixed-game events.

Best Rooms to Play Razz

Draw Poker

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Lowball games (e.g. Triple Draw)

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Crazy Pineapple

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HORSE

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HOSE

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HA

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