Burn card
The card the dealer discards face down before each flop, turn and river. Three per hand, and none of them are ever in play.
Before the flop is spread, the dealer takes the top card off the deck and puts it face down in the muck. The same thing happens before the turn and again before the river — three burn cards in a hold'em hand, none of them in play, none of them ever revealed. It is one of the small pieces of table procedure that most players perform for years without knowing what it is for.
The reason is protection. If the top card has picked up a mark, a bend or a smudge, someone at the table may have information about the next community card. Burning it removes that card from play, so any mark that survived the shuffle lands on a card nobody sees. The same logic covers a card that was accidentally exposed during the deal or a deck that got flashed on the previous hand.
It matters procedurally in one place: when a dealer forgets. If the flop is dealt without a burn, the standard fix is to pull the flop back, burn correctly and re-deal from the same deck — but rules vary by room and the floor decides. That is why players are entitled to speak up, and why announcing it before the betting round starts is far better than after.
The mistake is thinking a burn card changes the odds. It does not. An unseen card removed from the deck is exactly as informative as an unseen card left in it — your outs are your outs, and the count is unaffected whether the card sits in the muck or on top of the stub.
FAQ
Why do dealers burn a card in poker?
To protect against a marked, bent or accidentally exposed top card. Discarding it face down means any card someone might have information about never reaches the board, so the community cards stay genuinely unknown to everyone.
How many cards are burned in Texas Hold'em?
Three: one before the flop, one before the turn and one before the river. They go face down into the muck, are never turned over — not even at showdown — and are not replaced, so the stub simply runs three cards shorter than it looks.
Does burning a card change your odds?
No. A card removed from the deck unseen is exactly as unknown as one still in it, so your outs and your equity are unchanged. The burn is a security measure, not a mathematical one.