Pot Limit Poker Rules

If you are familiar with the rules for Limit Texas Hold'em, you will not need to learn too much more to understand our rules for Pot Limit Texas Hold'em. If you are not familiar with our Limit Texas Hold'em rules, we suggest you go here to read them and then return to this section.

Pot-Limit involves blinds, just as Limit does, and in our Pot-Limit games you have a choice of $.50/$1 and $1/$2 blinds. However, from here, Limit and Pot-Limit change dramatically.

In Pot-Limit, any player is allowed (assuming he has enough chips in front of him at the start of the hand to do so) to raise any amount within a certain range. This range is defined by the size of the pot at the time it is the player's turn to act.

The minimum allowable raise is either the size of the previous bet or the size of the previous raise, depending on whether the last action was a bet or a raise.

The maximum allowable raise is the size of the pot. Sometimes players in brick and mortar casinos have difficulty calculating this because of the rule that allows a player first to call the previous bet and then to bet the size of the pot, including that call. In on-line games, although you should still understand how the process works, our system software will calculate the proper raise range allowed and will not allow a player to make a raise too small or too large.

To see how the calculation of the raise limit would work, let's assume you are playing in a game where the blinds are $1-$2. The next player to act can fold, call the $2, or raise by placing any amount between $4 and $7 in the pot. If the player bets $4, he has raised the minimum, because the previous bet was $2, and he is doubling that. If the player bets $7, he is betting the maximum, because he is first calling the $2 blind bet, creating a total pot size of $5, and then raising the size of the pot. The $2 call plus the $5 raise yields the $7 bet.

Let's assume, to continue the example, that the first player to act does indeed bet the maximum $7. The pot now contains $12. This would mean that the next player to act could fold, call the $7 bet, or raise by betting an amount somewhere in the range between $14 and $24. This is the proper range because the minimum raise is $7 (the size of the previous bet) and the maximum raise is $19 (calculated by calling the $7 bet and then raising the size of the now $19 pot).

As you can see, if several players in a row decide to make pot-sized raises, the size of a pot can escalate rather dramatically. This is why we usually recommend that beginning players start off by playing limit poker before moving on to the more difficult (but for many, more fun and challenging) pot-limit form of poker.

Players may not bring additional chips to the table in the middle of a hand, but can always decide to bring more chips to the table in between hands.

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If a player bets more chips than you have in front of you, you are not forced out of the hand. You are allowed to call for whatever number of chips you have. If no one else is in the pot, the bettor simply takes back his excess chips, and the hand is played to conclusion without any additional betting. If there are other players remaining in the pot, it is possible that a side pot may be created.

If Andy does put in this $84.50 bet, Bob has no decision to make. All of his chips are already in the pot and he cannot be forced out by another bet. Chuck, however, must decide whether or not to call (he can't raise, because Andy has no chips with which to call a raise).

If Chuck calls Andy's $84.50 bet (and to do so, he need put only $49.50 in the pot, because that was all Andy was raising), a side pot of $99 is created, because $35 of this wager is "allocated" to the main pot that all three players are contesting. Bob cannot win this $99, even if he has a royal flush. The $99 side pot is contested only between the two players who put money into it, Andy and Chuck.

Although we have chosen to show you examples involve large sums, the same principles apply in smaller pot-limit games. Very experienced pot-limit players in brick and mortar card rooms learn how to calculate minimum and maximum bets, as well as side pots, fairly quickly, but fortunately the difficulty of these calculations is removed online, with our system software imposing minimum and maximum wagers appropriate to the situation.