07-26-05, LearnTexasHoldem:

Official Rules Of Poker

Question: I sent the e-mail below last week hoping to see a response in your Q&A section.

Please accept my apologies if you've answered a question like this in the past or the info is somewhere on your site already. I only stumbled upon your website a month ago and am still soaking it all in.

Top 3 Beginner Rooms

I am very much interested in coming by some official body of rules for Texas Hold'em, especially if such a thing is published by the gaming control authorities(Wikipedia) of Nevada or New Jersey. Again, not just the basics, but the nitty-gritty, like consequences/penalties for acting out of turn and other failures, errors, and omissions, dealing procedures, misdeals, etc. If this can't be posted on the website, would you please at least respond to this e-mail.

Thank you...

Robert Rowe

I'm looking for an official set of rules for Texas Hold'em that covers not only the basics that anyone who's watched a few WPT or WSOP telecasts can tell you off the top of their heads, but the finer points such as dealing procedures, betting procedures, everything to do with the muck (for example, once your cards touch the muck, your hand is dead and the cards aren't to be revealed), who turns over their hand first (I think that has something to do with who made the last aggressive betting action...???), how the community cards are dealt and arranged on the table, etc.

I would suspect that such a piece of literature is maintained and published by the gaming control authorities of Nevada and New Jersey, among others. It would be nice if, for home games and bar tournaments, we could have that set of official rules handy for reference in the event of a dispute.

How can I find such a set of official rules?

Answer: A couple things:

1. I don't think any board specifically regulates the rules for player versus player games. I think there are general rules, but not what you are looking for -- rules for penalties, acting in turn, etc.

2. All the major rules from cardroom to cardroom are the same. There are exceptions though, which makes it worth while to check up on them if you are going to play. (For cash games it doesn't matter as much, for tournaments it does though.) Obviously, you aren't going to go into a new cardroom and a flush loses to a straight, but you will have some nuances like kill pots, no cussing, buying the button, etc.

There is no one book, but there is a collection of rules by Bob Ciaffone: official poker rules. Bob Ciaffone also is a poker author and wrote a really good book "Middle Limit Holdem." Of all the books out there, that one is one of the best. I would highly recommend picking that book up. If you are a low limit player, not all of the stuff will apply yet, but it will help your game out tremendously. That book is the only one I've read that puts play into the context of the number of opponents in the hand. I don't know if Amazon sells it or not -- it is worth the hunt and price is you can find it.

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