Poker is a card game in which individuals compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves (the pot). The game has many variations, but all share the basic mechanic of betting in rounds and the fact that a player’s final hand determines who wins the pot. Players also compete by predicting what their opponents might do, which allows for bluffing. In poker tournaments, the winner of each table takes a percentage of the overall prize pool, with most players receiving no money at all.
During the 2000s, Texas hold ’em became one of the most popular forms of poker due to exposure on television and in popular literature. This form of the game replaced seven-card stud and is used in most major tournaments including the World Series of Poker’s Main Event. Hold ’em is played with no-limit betting, which makes it more attractive for bluffing.
The author of this rulebook, Robert Ciaffone (known in the poker world as Bob Ciaffone), has authored numerous rules books and is considered an expert in the field. He has worked on rules for numerous cardrooms and has a strong preference for uniform poker rules. He is particularly skilled at selecting which rules to use, formatting them for easy reading, and arranging them in an organized fashion.
The rules in this book are freely available for anyone to copy, and they may be modified by any person or business that wishes to do so, provided the modified version complies with all laws of copyright and fair use. It is not permitted to sell the full set of rules, and the names of the authors should be credited when they are used in the same context.