Poker is a card game where players wager against one another. A player with a superior hand can win the pot, which contains all bets placed at each round of betting. A player may also win the pot without having a good hand by bluffing, convincing other players that he has a strong hand.
There are many variants of Poker, but all share certain fundamentals. A standard poker hand contains five cards. The value of a poker hand is in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency; that is, the more unusual the hand, the higher it ranks. A flush contains any 5 consecutive cards of the same suit. A straight contains 5 cards of consecutive rank but from more than one suit. A three of a kind is a hand with 3 cards of the same rank, such as three jacks or three sixes. A pair is a hand with 2 cards of the same rank, plus two other unmatched cards.
The game can be played with 2 to 14 players. The game begins with each player putting an initial contribution, called the ante, into the pot before any cards are dealt. A player can then raise his bet, provided he has not already raised it before and the total of all previous raises exceeds the amount in the pot at that time. Players can also fold at any point during the betting.