02-28-06, LearnTexasHoldem:

When Betting Rounds End

Question: Some friends and I were playing the other day and we have a question about how betting is allowed in a standard game.

Let's use the extreme example of saying I have pocket Aces. Obviously feeling good about my chances to win the hand, I would like to maximize the amount of money I can draw out of my opponents before seeing the flop (or at any other betting point in the hand). I make a wager of what I feel will be an appropriate number of chips that will be called by several players without scaring anyone off too early.

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Let's say that 4 people call my bet, with no one raising. When the player to my right makes the last in this series of calls, do I have the option to bet again? Or has the betting ended for the moment in anticipation of the flop? Obviously I would like to be able to continue making small wagers indefinitely to keep milking chips from my opponents, and this would be especially true if we were further into the hand and the chances were very strong that I had the best cards.

However, I feel that in this situation that the betting has ended since there were no raises by the time it got back to me. So I guess the question is, if there are no raises after an initial bet is made, can the initial bettor start another round of wagers, and if so, is there a limit to the number of times this can go around? If the answer happens to be "whatever I decide to play with my house rules", then I would ask what a typical house would rule on this question.

Thanks for your time!

Answer:

No, you don't have the option to bet/raise in that situation.

How the betting rounds work is that everyone has a chance to act (this is called an 'option'). So in your example you bet and everyone just called. The betting is closed now and we go on to the flop because all the player's bets are equal (or someone is all-in and can't match the bet). If someone raised, then everyone would have a turn again to either call the extra amount, fold or reraise themselves. The underlying rule to all of this if you had to put it in an equation would be that everyone's bets have to be equal (or that person is all-in) and everyone has acted.

Now, in limit holdem and no limit holdem there is a slight difference on raising rules. In limit holdem there is what is called a cap. A cap is a limit on how many raises and reraises there can be per betting round. For example, if I bet and you raised, I could reraise, and then you could cap the betting. After that my option is to only call. In no limit holdem, there is no cap and you could hypothetically raise and reraise back and forth all day (all though this rarely happens).

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