Poker is a card game that can be played by two or more players. The objective is to have the best hand at the end of a betting round. The player with the highest hand wins the pot, which is the total amount of bets placed by all players. There are many variants of Poker, but they all share some similarities. For example, all Poker games involve a deck of cards and chips, and most involve placing bets.
Unlike other casino table games, Poker is almost always played with chips. The chips are worth different values, and each player must buy in for a certain number of chips before they can play. Usually, each player starts with 200 chips (or more). A white chip is worth the minimum ante or bet; a red chip is worth five whites, and so on.
A player can choose to raise or call another player’s bet. If they choose to raise, the player must match or exceed the previous raising player’s stake. Otherwise, they must fold their cards and can no longer compete for the pot.
Poker is one of the most popular card games in the world. It has also become a central topic of research in areas as diverse as computer science, decision making, and game theory. In particular, poker has been used in studies of optimal strategy and bluffing. A 1944 book by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, used poker as a key example.