Poker is a card game played with a minimum of seven players. Each player buys in for a set amount of chips. The player with the highest ranked poker hand wins the pot (the sum of all bets placed by players). Poker is considered a game of chance, but it also involves a significant amount of skill and psychology.
The main goal of poker is to make the best five-card poker hand. However, there are a lot of different ways to win the pot. You can bet big and intimidate your opponents into folding their cards or you can force them to raise when they don’t have a strong hand by playing smart.
To do this, you need to understand what your opponent’s range of hands is. While new players will try to put their opponents on a specific hand, more experienced players will work out the range of hands that their opponents could have and then adjust their bets accordingly.
In the first betting round (called the Flop) each player must place a number of chips in the pot (representing money). The player to the left of the dealer starts the betting with their option to check, which means they are passing on the bet or raising, which is betting more than their opponent has placed on previous rounds.
Say you deal yourself a pair of kings (not a great hand, but not bad either). On the flop, Alex checks, Charley calls and Dennis raises a dime.