The Basics of Poker
Poker is a card game played by two or more people and can be enjoyed in a variety of settings. Generally the players place an initial amount of money in the pot before cards are dealt called antes, blinds or bring-ins. After this players make a choice to call, check or raise. This is called the betting round.
Once the betting round is over the dealer deals three cards face up on the table that everyone can use, called the flop. Once again the players have a chance to call, check or raise and then the dealer puts another card on the board that anyone can use called the turn.
The main goal of poker is to get the best possible poker hand by combining the rank of your individual cards with the strength of other players hands. There are many different types of poker hands but the most common are: Straight, Flush and Three of a kind.
A Straight contains five cards of consecutive rank (ascending or descending) from the same suit, a Flush contains five cards of matching suits and a Three of a kind is made up of two pairs of cards of the same rank and one unmatched card.
A good poker player will learn to read the other players at the table by watching their body language and looking for tells. These aren’t the subtle physical poker “tells” you see in the movies but things like how often they bet and when, which cards they play and so on.