Poker is a card game in which players place chips (representing money) into the pot according to the rules of the variant being played. Players may also bluff, betting that they have a stronger hand than they actually do, and win by fooling other players into calling their bets.
The standard poker hand comprises five cards. The value of a hand is in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency; the more rare a combination of cards, the higher it ranks. Ties are broken by the highest unmatched cards or secondary pairs (in a full house, for example). Some games use wild cards in addition to traditional ranking rules, and there are also some games where the lowest hand wins, sometimes known as high low split games.
Like life, poker is full of risk and reward. Playing safe – avoiding the big risks and only playing strong hands – can lead to missing opportunities where a moderate amount of risk could yield a large reward, such as winning a tournament or getting a job offer. Successful poker players know when to call, raise, or fold, and how to read their opponents.
Stories about poker are enriched by anecdotes and descriptions of tells, which are the unconscious habits of a player that reveal information about their cards. These can be as simple as a change in the way a player holds their cards or a facial expression. They can also be physical, such as the player’s body language or their gestures.
