Poker is a card game where players place chips (representing money) into a pot when they decide to make a bet. There are a lot of different poker variants, but the basics all involve shuffling and dealing cards to players one at a time. A player can choose to call a bet or raise it by saying “raise.” This adds more money into the betting pool. The player to their right then has the option of raising or folding, if they do not want to match the bet.
In poker, the ranking of a hand is determined by its odds. A pair is two matching cards of the same rank, a three of a kind is three cards of the same rank, and a straight or flush is five consecutive cards of the same suit. Ties are broken by the highest unmatched card or secondary pairs (in a full house, for instance). The standard 52-card pack contains the ace, king, queen, and jack of each suit, along with a joker called the bug, which counts as a wild card.
A good poker player learns to play the situation and not their own cards. A pair of aces is great, but they will be losers against another player holding A-A. A good poker player knows this and makes smart bets, raising when they think their opponent is weak. They also know how to read tells, which are the nervous habits of a player (like fiddling with their chips) that give away their hand strength.