Poker is a card game where players compete to form the best possible hand based on the ranking of cards in order to win the pot at the end of each betting round. The bluffing element of this game is one of the reasons why it’s so popular and can be very profitable.
Each player places an ante (the first amount of money that all players must put into the pot) and then they are dealt a hand of five cards. Each player can choose to call, raise or fold their hand. If they call, they must put the same amount of chips into the pot as the person to their left. If they raise, they must put more than the previous person and if they fold, they lose all their chips in the pot.
A good poker player should learn to read their opponents and this is where the most skill can be found in this game. A lot of the information that can be gained on reading other players doesn’t come from subtle physical poker “tells” but rather from patterns. If a player is checking pre-flop frequently then they are probably playing very weak hands.
There is a very large number of free and paid poker training resources available today. This makes learning poker much easier and faster than it was just a few years ago when there were only a handful of forums worth visiting and a small number of books that were worth reading.