A Beginner’s Guide to Poker

Poker is a card game in which players make bets on the strength of their hand. The highest hand wins the pot. There are various types of poker games, but all involve betting and a showdown.

A standard poker deck contains 52 cards, divided into four suits. The game is played by two or more players, and betting passes clockwise around the table. Some games have a fixed limit on how much may be raised during each betting interval. These rules are usually described in a poker rulebook.

The most important thing to learn as a beginning player is how to read other players’ tells (eye movements, idiosyncratic gestures, betting patterns etc). You should be able to spot conservative players by their tendency to fold early in a hand. Aggressive players will often raise a bet before seeing how the other players are acting on their hands.

Most forms of poker require one or more players to make a forced bet at the start of each hand, called an ante or blind bet. The dealer then shuffles the cards and deals them to each player, one at a time, beginning with the player to their left. Each player then makes a bet in turn, either calling or raising the previous player’s bet.

Some variants of poker award the pot to the highest hand according to the standard rankings, while others use lower ranking hands for this purpose. A high-low split is another common variation, where the highest and lowest hands share the pot. Some games also use wild cards.