How the betting is done
In poker betting is done on each street. There are different number of streets, depending on what game you are playing.
When it’s a players turn he has a few options, he can either CALL the bet from another player, BET himself or RAISE the bet made by a player before him, and lastly he can FOLD his hand(throw it away and thus exiting the hand). If no bets ware made in the betting round(remember, blinds are blind bets as well), the players also have the option to CHECK, which means they basically pass the betting to the next player.
Every time someone makes a bet or raises in front of you or it’s checked to you, you have the option to raise, reraise or bet. The betting round ends when all players still in the hand exercise their option to call the previous bets/raises/reraises/rereraises… you get the point, right?
Sometimes games have a betting CAP, especially fixed limit games(betting variants are explained below). That can mean 2 things. It can mean that the number of raises is limited, for example, players can only bet-raise-reraise(3bet) and rereaise(4bet), this is usual for fixed limit games.
The second option is that it means that the maximum amount of money someone can put in the pot is limited to a certain amount, this is sometimes used in no limit and pot limit games(it really wouldn’t make much sens in fixed limit games:)).
Poker betting variants:
In any poker variant betting can be either fixed, no limit or pot limit.
No limit:
In no limit games players can bet as much as they want(limited by the amount that they are playing with).
Fixed limit:
In fixed limit games the bets are predetermined(for example preflop bet is 1$, flop bet is 2$) no one can bet or raise for more or less than the determined amount(but a player can still raise another players bet for that same amount). Example: first player bets 2$ second player can now raise him 2$(to 4$ in total).
Pot limit:
Now pot limit is a bit more complicated, the allowed bet size is limited by the pot(amount of money/chips already put on the table from players betting). You calculate the pot size by taking the current pot(current bets as well) and adding the last bet made multiplied by 3. In math terms it would look something like this:
Pot size= pot from previous rounds+current bets+3*last made bet
Example:
In the first betting round players put 40$ in the pot, now in the second betting round the first player can not bet more than 40$. Now let’s say he bets 20$ and the next player calls his bet. How much can the third player raise? Simple, you take the 40$ already in the pot from the first betting round, add the second players call(20$) and also add the first players bet(20$) multiplied by 3. So it looks like this… pot=40$+20$+3*20$=120$, so the third player can raise to a maximum amount of 120 dollars.
