Poker is a card game in which players place bets (representing money) into a pot. The player with the highest-ranking hand wins the pot. Players may also bluff, betting that they have a high hand when in reality they do not, and win if players holding inferior hands call the bet.
A poker hand consists of five cards. The value of a hand is in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency, so the more rare the hand, the higher it ranks. A straight contains five consecutive cards of the same suit, while a flush is any 5 cards of the same rank but from different suits. A pair is two cards of the same rank, while three of a kind is three matching cards of the same rank.
One of the keys to becoming a successful poker player is to read your opponents. This doesn’t just mean watching subtle physical tells like a nervous fidgeting with their chips or playing around with a cigarette, it also means watching their patterns. If someone bets every time then it’s likely they have a strong hand, whereas if they call most of the time then they are probably playing a weaker one.
Beginners tend to stick with strong starting hands but this will only get you so far, if you want to make a living out of the game then it’s important to widen your range of starting hands and learn to play more weak ones too. When you do this your opponents will find it much harder to pick up on your bluffs because you won’t make it so obvious.
