Poker is a card game in which players compete to make the best 5-card hand. The best hand wins the pot, or the amount of money that has been bet during the round of play. The game can be played with two or more players. The rules vary slightly between different games, but all poker variants involve betting and the sharing of cards.
Before starting to play Poker, each player puts down an amount of money for the pot. The player to his left then places a bet, either calling it (putting into the pot the same number of chips as was raised since his last turn) or raising it. He may also drop, or refuse to place a bet, in which case he forfeits the amount of money he put down for that round of play.
Once the betting interval has ended, the remaining players reveal their cards and the player with the highest poker hand wins the pot. Sometimes there is a tie amongst the players with the best hands, in which case the pot is shared among those players.
Learning to play Poker teaches you how to make decisions under uncertainty, which is an essential skill in many areas of life. It is important to understand the probability that you will receive the right cards, and it is equally important to know how much your opponents are betting. This way you can evaluate whether it makes sense to call, raise, or fold.