The Basics of Poker

Poker is a card game in which players place chips (representing money) into the pot. The goal of the game is to win the most money in the round. Players must decide whether to call, fold or raise the bet made by the player before them in order to increase their chances of winning the pot. Raising a bet is also known as a’re-raise’ and the act of calling a bet is called ‘checking’.

Each player is dealt five cards and must form a poker hand from those cards. A poker hand ranks in inverse proportion to its frequency in the deck: a high-frequency hand is worth more than a low-frequency one. Players may bluff by betting that they have the best hand when they do not, in order to force other players into folding their hands or raising their own bets.

After the first round of betting is complete, the dealer deals three additional cards on the board that anyone can use. These are known as the flop. After this the next round of betting takes place.

In the third stage, known as ‘the turn’, an additional community card is added to the table making it a total of four cards with faces up. In the fourth and final betting stage, called ‘the river’ the fifth and last card is revealed and the player with the highest ranked poker hand wins the pot. Ties are broken by the highest card – this is called ‘high card’ and it also breaks ties between pairs of two distinct cards.