Strategy Guide

Cash Game is a free no-limit Texas Hold 'em training simulator at $5/$10 blinds. It runs entirely on your device and never uses real money. This guide covers everything you need: the rules, the math behind good decisions, and the strategy that wins over time.

1. The rules of Texas Hold 'em

Each player receives two private cards. Five shared community cards are dealt face up in three stages. You make the best five-card hand from any combination of your two cards and the five on the board.

• Blinds: the two seats left of the dealer button post $5 (small blind) and $10 (big blind) before cards are dealt. The button moves clockwise every hand.
• Preflop: after hole cards are dealt, action starts left of the big blind. Each player folds, calls or raises.
• Flop, turn, river: three cards, then one, then one more, each followed by a betting round starting left of the button.
• Showdown: if two or more players remain after the river, the best hand wins. Ties split the pot.
• No-limit: you may bet any amount up to your whole stack at any time.

2. Hand rankings

From strongest to weakest: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. The Rankings tab in the menu shows an example of each.

3. Position: the most important edge

Acting last is a huge advantage. You see what everyone else does before you decide, you control the size of the pot, and you can bluff more effectively. The button is the best seat; the blinds are the worst.

• Play fewer hands from early position and more from the button and cutoff.
• Out of position, keep pots smaller with marginal hands and check-raise your strong ones.

4. Starting hand selection

Most losing players play too many hands. A disciplined starting range is the fastest way to improve.

• Premium: AA, KK, QQ, AK — raise and re-raise.
• Strong: JJ, TT, AQ, AJ suited, KQ suited — raise from most seats.
• Speculative: small pairs, suited connectors, suited aces — play in position, cheaply, hoping to hit big.
• Trouble hands: weak offsuit aces and kings like A7o or K9o often make second-best hands. Fold them early.
• Open with a raise (around 2.5–3 big blinds) rather than limping in.

5. Outs and the rule of 2 and 4

An out is a card that improves your hand to the likely winner. A flush draw has 9 outs; an open-ended straight draw has 8; a gutshot has 4.

Quick estimate: on the flop, multiply your outs by 4 to get your percentage chance of hitting by the river (if you'll see both cards). On the turn, multiply by 2. A flush draw on the flop is roughly 36%; on the turn, roughly 18%.

6. Pot odds

Pot odds compare the price of a call to the size of the pot. If the pot is $90 and you must call $30, you're risking $30 to win $120 total — you need to win more than 25% of the time to profit.

Formula: required equity = call ÷ (pot + call). If your chance of winning is higher than that number, calling is profitable over the long run.

Implied odds add the money you expect to win on later streets when you hit. Deep stacks make speculative hands like small pairs more valuable for this reason.

7. Expected value (EV)

Every decision has an average result over many repetitions. A good decision has positive EV even when it loses this particular time. Judge your play by the quality of decisions, not individual outcomes — poker results are noisy over hundreds of hands.

8. Bet sizing

• Value bets: bet larger when worse hands will call — on wet, draw-heavy boards, charge draws a high price.
• Continuation bets: on dry boards (like K-7-2 rainbow) a small bet of a third of the pot often wins.
• Bluffs: size your bluffs like your value bets so opponents can't tell them apart.
• Stack-to-pot ratio (SPR): when your stack is small compared to the pot, top pair is often good enough to commit. With a large SPR, be careful with one-pair hands.

9. Game theory and balance

Game Theory Optimal (GTO) play means mixing value bets and bluffs in proportions an opponent can't exploit. Against real players, the bigger profit usually comes from exploitative play: noticing tendencies and adjusting.

• Against players who call too much: bluff less, value bet more.
• Against players who fold too much: bluff more often.
• Against very aggressive players: tighten up and let them bet into your strong hands.

10. Reading opponents

Two simple stats describe most players. VPIP is how often they put money in preflop; PFR is how often they raise. Loose players have high VPIP; passive players have VPIP much higher than PFR. The session log in the menu tracks these for you and every opponent.

11. Common leaks to avoid

• Calling too often "to see one more card" without the right pot odds.
• Playing tired or on tilt after a bad beat — take a break.
• Going all-in with a dominated hand (A-J against A-Q is a classic trap).
• Slow-playing too much and giving free cards to draws.
• Ignoring position and stack sizes.

House rules for this simulator

• The table opens empty. Press Deal first hand to start — with or without you.
• Open Start here and press Buy in between hands to take a seat with $1,000.
• Anyone with $100 or less may rebuy for $1,000. Your rebuys are unlimited; opponents get one (Jimmy gets two).
• Heads-up mode is one buy-in each, no rebuys — first player out of chips loses.
• Difficulty locks after the first hand until you reset the session.
• Bets move in $5 steps; all-ins may be any amount. An odd split-pot chip goes to the first winner after the button.
• The session ends when one player holds every chip.

Fair dealing

Every deck is shuffled with a cryptographically seeded generator. Opponents only react to actions they can see — never your hidden cards.