Texas Holdem Rules

Holdem is clearly a descendant of 7-Stud in that players form a five-card hand from seven available cards, but that's where the similarity ends. In fact, only two cards are actually held by the player as pocket cards. The other five are open, dealt to the middle of the table and shared by all players. Hold’em can be played with only two players or theoretically; with as many as twenty-three players (this exhausts the number of cards in the deck). In practice however, it is rarely played with more than twelve players due to the size of the table, with eight to eleven players considered the optimum range.

All the above means that, in Texas Hold'em, each player receive two "hole" cards face down, and five face up community cards are dealt in the center of the table. The player who makes the best five-card poker hand with any combination of their two hole cards and the five community cards wins the round.

The dealer in Hold’em is marked by a disk called the button, which is a disc or other marker used to indicate which person is going to be the "dealer" for the round.  For each hand the button rotates to the left. Players are identified by their seat position. The dealer is seat one, the player to the dealer's left is seat two and so on, clockwise around the table to the player on the dealer's right which is typically seat nine.

In practice, casino Hold'em has a fixed (house) dealer and the button rotates around the table simply to mark the rotation of theoretical dealer. Betting position significantly affects a player's opportunities so the button's position in not simply symbolic.

Rules at The Flop
Rules at The Turn
Rules at The River
Rules at The Showdown
Rules at The Open