What is Community Card?

A community card is a card dealt face up in the middle of the table and shared by every player still in the hand. Each player combines the community cards with their own private hole cards to make a final five-card hand, so everyone works from the same public information plus a small private piece. Texas Hold'em and Omaha are the best-known community-card games; stud and draw formats have none. In Hold'em five community cards arrive in stages — three, then one, then one — and a player may use any combination of them with their hole cards, including all five. Omaha uses the same five but requires exactly two hole cards and three community cards. Because the cards are public, the value of a hand can change completely from one street to the next, and the same layout can give two players the identical holding, which is how split pots occur. The community cards on the table are collectively called the board.