The goal of Texas Holdem is to create a possibly winning poker hand from two hole cards and five community cards. While this gives you a total of seven cards, you may only use five to build your hand. This requires a certain level of both pessimism and optimism. The origin of Hi Low Texas Holdem Poker is still a mystery but if you believe rumors then we can say that someone randomly decided to play Texas Holdem game for the lowest hand, just because he was bored by playing usual Texas Holdem. As if this wasn’t enough, they decided to try one game where both low and high hands can be winning hands. This is political correctness at its best; everybody has a chance to win. This is as a likely scenario for the birth of Texas Holdem High –Low split games.
How to Play Texas Holdem HI-Low Poker & its Rules
The following is a brief recounting of the official rules for playing Texas Holdem Hi-Low Poker. The calls are Bid, Check, Call, Raise and Fold.
1. The dealer will deal two cards face down to each player, one at a time. The player to the left of the dealer is always the one to get his card first. After each player has their cards, betting begins. The player on the left of the player who posted the big blind, begins the betting.
2. The top card must be burned after each betting round. This simply means it is discarded. The “Flop” is the first of the community cards to be dealt. This consists of 3 cards face up.
3. Betting takes place after the flop and the player that is still in the game to the left of dealer bets first and the bets go around until everyone has put the same amount into the pot or folded out of the game.
4. Another card is burned and the “turn” card is revealed. Another round of betting like the previous round takes place. This is where players may call, check, raise or fold depending on a particular set of house rules.
5. Another card is discarded and the final or “river“card is revealed. Most of the players having bad hands generally fold in this round.
6. The last round is the show down, to see which player has the better hand.
In Hi-low card games, the best high hand and the qualifying low hand wins, thus splitting the pot, and if no hand qualifies as low then the entire pot goes to the High Hand winner.
