Poker is a card game that involves betting, bluffing, and other strategies. The game is played between two or more players and focuses on the manipulation of probabilities, psychology, and game theory. The player with the highest hand wins the pot.

All players must make an initial forced bet, called an ante. This is placed into the central pot before cards are dealt. Once the antes have been placed, there are a number of rounds of betting where players can raise or fold their cards.

In the basic form of the game, cards are arranged into hands that consist of five cards. A hand is ranked according to its mathematical frequency, with a higher ranking card beating a lower one (Ace beats 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, for example). Some games also use wild cards, which can take on any suit or rank the possessor desires.

There are dozens of variations of Poker, from Hold’Em to Stud to Draw and Badugi. Each variation has its own rules, but the overall game is based on the same principles.

A key strategy is to read your opponents and look for tells. A tell is an unconscious habit of a player that gives away information about their hand. It can be as simple as a change in posture or as complex as a facial expression. Each player has a different set of tells, but a good poker player can spot them quickly and exploit them.