Poker is a card game in which players wager money against each other. The winner of a hand wins the pot, which is all the money that has been bet during that round. The player with the highest ranked hand wins, but the odds of getting that hand are determined by a combination of chance, psychology and game theory. Players also place bets based on expected value and bluffing.
After the dealer has dealt everyone 2 cards face down he deals three more cards onto the table that anyone can use (the flop). Then the betting starts. If you want to increase the amount of money you put in the pot you say “raise”. Other players then have a choice, either to call your new bet or fold their cards.
A hand is made up of 5 cards of matching rank or a sequence that skips around in rank but are from the same suit. For example Ace high. A full house is 3 matching cards of one rank plus two matching cards of another rank. A flush is five cards of the same suit that are consecutive. A pair is 2 cards of the same rank plus a single unmatched card.
Poker has many different variations but the most popular is no-limit Texas Hold’em. It is a very simple game to learn and a lot of fun to play. While it may seem difficult to understand all the odds and probabilities, after a while you’ll start to develop an intuition for things like frequencies and EV estimation.