Poker is a card game that involves betting between players. The game is played from a standard 52-card pack with four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs), plus one or more jokers. The higher the rank of a poker hand, the better. The game usually starts with each player putting an initial contribution into the pot, called a blind or ante.
After the blind or ante, cards are dealt and players place bets on their hands. During each betting interval, the goal is to minimize losses with poor hands and maximize winnings with superior ones. A key element in this strategy is bluffing, where a player projects confidence that their hand is more valuable than it really is in order to convince opponents to fold and let them win the pot.
Most poker games are played with chips; each color represents a different value: white chips, worth the lowest ante or bet, red chips, worth 10 times as many, and blue chips, worth 20 or 25 times as much. Each player must have a certain number of white and red chips before they can make a bet.
A poker hand must consist of five cards; the highest hand wins. A pair is two distinct cards of the same rank; the highest pair wins. A three of a kind is three cards of the same rank matched with two other unmatched cards; the highest three of a kind wins. A straight is 5 cards in order, but not all of them must be the same suit; the highest straight wins.