Poker is a card game played with chips (representing money). Each player places an initial forced bet, called an ante. The dealer then shuffles the cards and deals each player one at a time, starting with the person on their left. A series of betting intervals then takes place with the players placing their bets into a central pot. The highest hand wins the pot at the end of each round.
Players can play hands higher than Queen, Six and Four or they can choose to “fold” their hand and drop out of the game, leaving their ante wager behind. Players may also raise their bets during the betting intervals, allowing them to bluff or to make their opponents think they have a good hand.
The basic rules are fairly simple. Each player is dealt five cards with the highest hand winning. If no one has a high hand, the highest card breaks ties. There are various types of hands but the most common are high cards, pairs and three of a kind. High cards are any cards that have a value of 10 or higher, pairs are two cards of the same number and three of a kind is any type of three distinct cards. The game is played with a standard 52-card pack and the joker (called a bug in some games) is wild and can be used as any rank. The suits are spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. Some poker variants use more than 52 cards and some add special cards such as deuces or one-eyed jacks.