Cheery Chimp

Texas Hold'em is one of the most widely played forms of poker. Each player is dealt two private cards, known as hole cards, and up to five community cards are dealt face up in the center of the table. Players use the best five-card combination they can make from their seven available cards.

The exact origins of Texas Hold'em are uncertain, but the game is generally associated with the early 20th century and the state of Texas. The town of Robstown, Texas is commonly credited as the birthplace of the modern game. From there, the game spread to other parts of Texas before eventually reaching Las Vegas.

Hold'em became particularly important in the development of modern poker because its community-card system creates substantial interaction between players. The sequence of betting rounds also allows players to make decisions based not only on their own cards but on the cards that appear on the table and the actions of their opponents.

The game reached Las Vegas in the late 1960s. A group of Texas poker players, including Crandell Addington, Tom Moore, and Doyle Brunson, helped introduce the game to Nevada's casino poker rooms. The first major tournament versions of Hold'em helped establish the game as a serious form of competitive poker.

The World Series of Poker, established in 1970, eventually played a major role in popularizing Texas Hold'em. The tournament's No-Limit Hold'em main event became one of the most prestigious competitions in professional poker. The game was initially only one of several poker variants played at the World Series, but it gradually became the event most closely associated with the tournament.

Texas Hold'em experienced another enormous increase in popularity during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Televised poker tournaments introduced the game to a large international audience, while online poker allowed players to compete against one another from home. The period is often associated with the "poker boom," during which participation in Hold'em tournaments and cash games grew dramatically.

Today, Texas Hold'em is played in casinos, card rooms, tournaments, home games, and online. Both Limit Hold'em and No-Limit Hold'em are widely recognized forms, with No-Limit Hold'em becoming especially prominent in tournament poker. The game's combination of simple basic rules, hidden information, betting strategy, and psychological play has made it one of the defining forms of modern poker.