Poker is a card game that involves both chance and skill. It can be played for cash or in tournaments. In either case, it’s a game of incomplete information in which you don’t know your opponents’ cards or how good their hands are. Players are dealt two cards (“hole cards”), and then five community cards are dealt face up (“the flop”). A player’s goal is to make the best possible 5-card hand from these (called “community”) cards using bluffing and psychology. The highest ranked hand wins the pot – all the chips bet during that betting street.
Before the cards are dealt, a player to the left of the button posts two mandatory bets (“blinds”) into the pot, and then the rest of the players act in turn. The goal of these bets is to give players an incentive to play a hand by creating a pot that they can win.
The next three cards are dealt face up (“the flop”). There is another round of betting. After this, a final card is revealed (“the river”) and there’s one last chance to bet. Then all players show their hands.
If at any point during the series of betting streets only one player remains active, they reveal their hole cards and the highest ranked hand wins the pot. If no player has a high-ranked hand, the remaining players are awarded a share of the kitty – a pool of low-denomination chips that’s been built up by “cutting” one low-denomination chip from each pot in which there’s more than one raise.
