Ring games

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What are ring games?

Ring games are poker games played with real chips at stake. Unlike tournament chips, which are worth nothing outside the tournament, ring game chips represent real money. For example, if you buy in for £10 worth of chips and leave the game with £40, you made a £30 profit.

888.com offers ring games of Texas Hold'em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo and Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo variations 24 hours a day. Ring games start when two or more active players sit down at a table.

Unlike tournaments, at ring games you are not committed to play for a specified amount of time. You can sit down, play and leave with your winnings whenever you want. Another difference is that at ring games the table limits are fixed for the entire length of the game, whereas at tournaments the limits increase with each round.

888.com also offers two progressive jackpots at ring game tables: the Bad Beat jackpot and the Royal jackpot. We launch our jackpots at initial amounts of £5,000. The more hands played, the bigger the jackpots grow. Visit our Jackpots page to learn how to join a jackpot table.

How to play ring games

You can buy in to a ring game with the maximum amount of chips, or specify a different amount in the window that pops up.

Mark the Automatically get more chips checkbox to automatically buy in again with a new stack of chips if you happen to go bust at the tables. Just select the amount you want to buy in with automatically, and click OK.

Click the Sit down button

in order to join the table. If you would like to switch seats with another player, right click on the preferred seat and click the Seat here option. The table will rotate, and you will be seated in your chosen seat. Alternatively, you can choose your preferred seat the in Setting screen (Game settings tab) for any of our tables. Once chosen, you will be seated in your preferred seat at all times.

To start playing Hold'em and Omaha, you have to post an amount equal to the big blind, or wait until the big blind comes around to you. In Stud games, no matter when or where you sit down at the table, all you have to do is ante up if you want to be dealt into a hand.

As you play

you will find it convenient to use the automatic checkbox options in the lower left corner:

Post your future blind bets automatically using Post blinds
Sit out
Muck all your losing and winning cards automatically using Never Show Hand
Fold to any bet that is placed during that round

Black buttons with

colored stripe - Call, Fold, Check, Bet, Raise etc. - will appear when it is your turn to act. In No Limit and Pot Limit games, you can use the slider to control how much you want to bet, or just type in the amount in the slider text box.

Before it is your turn to act, you can use the black auto-action radio buttons to determine what you want to do when your turn comes around. This is especially useful when playing multi-hand poker.

Sometimes a hand passes

so fast that you feel you didn't see everything there was to see (e.g. somebody made a crazy call and you want to go back and see so you can write valuable player notes on that player's betting habits). You can view an instant replay of the entire previous hand using the replay button on the top-left corner of the screen.

If you have several

poker games open at the same time, you can decide how to view them by selecting the Tile or Cascade view options.

Enjoy the tables and good luck!