Poker is a card game in which players place bets on the possibility of having a good poker hand. There are many forms of poker, but most involve six or seven players and a common objective of winning the pot (the sum of all bets made on a deal). The best way to win a pot is to have a high-ranking poker hand, but you can also make a large bet that no one calls and still win.
A poker hand is a set of five cards arranged in a particular sequence and/or ranking. A poker hand may contain either all of the same rank, or three matching cards of a certain rank and two unmatched cards of another rank. A four of a kind is any combination of 4 cards of the same rank, a flush is 5 consecutively ranked cards from more than one suit, and a full house is three of a kind plus a pair.
Depending on the rules of the specific poker variant being played, betting takes place at different intervals. When it is a player’s turn to bet, he must either raise or call the total stake of the last player. A player who wants to stay in the pot must either match this bet or else fold, and therefore forfeit any money he has contributed to the pot so far.