Poker is a skill game. At any given moment, or during any particular game luck is involved but over the long term whether you win or lose has almost nothing to do with luck. It is therefore important that you learn the rules of the game and practice to understand it. In Texas Holdem Poker, seven cards dealt with the best five at the showdown win sounds easy but this is far from a simple game. It involves emotion, variance, mathematical calculation, statistical probability, and an ability to read people's body language. The cards you are dealt play a part, but they are only a small part of the equation. It is an interesting fact that poker is the only card game where the worst hand can win (via bluffing). The basic rules of poker follow below.

Poker uses a standard 52 card deck with no jokers (other than your opponents). There are a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 10 players to a single table, but a limitless number of tables.

All players contribute to a communal pot and the object of the game is to win it. This can be done with the best cards or the worst, the beauty of poker is that it is the way that you play them and the way that you bet that will determine the outcome.

Each player is dealt two cards (called hole cards) which are face down. These cards can only be seen by the person to whom they were dealt. Betting occurs at various intervals, and in varying amounts depending on the type of holdem poker game. At each betting round players have a few options. These are:

1) Fold. You can fold at any time when it is your turn, and sometimes though hard to do it can be the best play. You will not win by folding but you can save your chips for better opportunities later in the game. Learning to fold good cards in certain circumstances is one of the hardest concepts to master.

2) Check. This action is to stay in the running but signals that you do not wish to bet more at this time.

3) Call. A playing move whereby you match the amount that someone before you bet. This shows that you are interested in seeing further cards, but at this time for no further cost.

4) Bet. You make the first bet into the pot that is greater than the forced bets already in the pot called the blinds.

5) Raise. Where you like the cards you hold and want to push more money in the pot.

6) Re-raise. Someone has bet, another player has raised, and you decide your hand is so strong that you want to go over the top of the first two and bet even more.

As can be seen players have a variety of options each time it is their turn to act. They key, and objective of poker is to win the pot. The real skill is the way you master the situation to your advantage such that you maximise your winning value when you have the best cards and you lose the least when you don't. Managing these things alone will not turn you into a winner. You must learn the art of bluffing (pretending you have the best poker hand when in fact you have little or no hand at all) and bluff in such a way that you earn pots you otherwise wouldn't with cards that would not normally win.

No. There are a couple of reasons I ask for your email address when signing up as a member. The main one for you is to enable me to invite you to Texas Holdem Freeroll Tournaments that I offer on a regular basis (usually monthly). These are good fun, give you an opportunity to practice, but as the name suggests give you the chance to win real and significant amounts of money from the $1000 on offer each freeroll.

The second reason I collect email addresses is to prevent spam on my site. I've spent a lot of time developing what I hope you will find is a useful Texas Holdem Resource offering Rules, Strategy, Hints and Tips to assist your online poker game. My site is attacked regularly by faceless persons who want to take traffic such as yourself to other sites less informative than this one. To guard against these people I need your email address in order to verify that you are a real person before I allow you to post and contribute in forums, blogs or discussions as you would on any other self respecting community. It is my aim to develop a significant online Texas Holdem Poker community and I hope you will support my endeavours.

A difficult question for me to answer, as it is entirely dependent on the jurisdiction that come from. If you are living in North Korea then the answer is certainly not and I suggest you close down this site immediately and hand yourself in to the authorities. Almost everywhere else I believe it is, but you should check with your lawyer if you are in any doubt.

Yes, access to the forum is via the forum box on the left hand side. I allow you to post if you are a registered member and for my part I will attempt to answer any questions you may have in less than a day.

Poker Tournaments are a very good way to spend a few hours attempting to turn a small amount of money into in some cases staggering sums. The concept is simple - lots of players pay a small entry fee in return for a set amount of poker chips. You then compete against perhaps hundreds or even thousands of other players to attempt to take everyone else's chips. The player who at the end of the tournament has all the poker chips is the winner (taking often serious cash) but many of the runners up win prizes also. Good value, good learning, good entertainment would be my summary. (I'm also a real tourney fan after I won the Full Tilt Poker $9500 tournament in mid December 05. Read all about it in my blog.)

If I had any idea I would. I must confess the history of poker goes back only about 25 years for me. A friend introduced me to a home game and from then on I was hooked. You probably don't want to know that though. Look for it on the internet and if you find out do let me know.

There is no catch at all. I'm trying to build a successful Texas Holdem Poker community of members who are interested in getting together on a monthly basis to play a game of poker. In between times I'd be happy if they stopped off here, had a chat, learned from others and became better poker players. If I break even along the way by receiving a small registration fee when you visit a room from my site then that'd be a bonus. The Freerolls are exactly that - real money, free to all members who sign up from my site. No restrictions on entry or on removing prizemoney - support my site and just turn up and play!