How to Play Poker

Poker is a card game where players compete to make the best five-card hand. It involves a great deal of chance, but it also requires skill and mental toughness. A good poker player is able to make money even when they don’t have the best hand, because they know how to spot opportunities and take advantage of them.

The first step to playing poker is learning the rules. The basic rule is that each player buys in with a certain number of chips. Each chip has a value: a white chip is worth one unit of the minimum ante, a red chip is worth two units, and so on. The dealer shuffles the cards, and the players place their bets in clockwise order. After each betting round, the dealer passes the button to the next player to the left.

In a poker game, the highest-ranking hand wins. The most common hands are pairs, three of a kind, straights, and flushes. A pair is two cards of the same rank, three of a kind are three cards of the same rank in no particular order, and a straight is five consecutive cards from the same suit. A flush is five cards of the same suit but from different suits, and a full house is three of a kind plus two unmatched cards.

A top poker player will fast-play their strong hands, which means raising the pot size and chasing off others who are waiting for a better hand to come along. They’ll also mix up their tactics and use deception in the game, so that their opponents don’t always know what they’re holding.