Poker is a card game played by two or more players. The cards are dealt in one round, and the player with the best five-card hand wins the pot (the sum of all bets). There are many different poker games. Some have more than two cards, but the most common game has five. Each player buys in for a set number of chips. A white chip is worth a minimum amount of money, and red and blue chips are higher-valued.
If you don’t have a good hand, it’s usually better to fold than keep betting on a hope that something will come up. The more you play, the more you’ll learn which hands are more valuable than others. But it’s important to remember that a poker hand’s strength is largely determined by its context. If you have pocket kings and the flop comes A-A, your kings will lose 82% of the time.
When you’re in a hand and it’s your turn, you can say “call” or “I call” to match the last person’s bet. You can also raise your own bet if you want to. If you raise, make sure you have enough money to cover the total of your bet and the bets before you.
Watch your opponents for tells, which are little tricks they use to give away their confidence in a hand. Beginners often think about their opponents’ hands individually — trying to put them on specific hands — but this won’t work very well.