The Basics of Poker

Poker is a family of card games that are played around the world. The rules and variations vary from game to game, but they all involve one or more rounds of betting.

Players start with an amount of money in the pot, called an ante. Once they have this amount of money, the dealer shuffles and deals cards to the players one at a time, beginning with the player to their left.

The players can “call,” which is to match their opponent’s bet, or they can “raise,” which means adding more money to the pot. Each round of betting goes on until either a player folds, in which case the last person to bet wins the chips, or until all players have been dealt all their cards and the hand is shown.

When a player has five cards that are the same suit, they are said to have a straight. A straight can be any number of cards in order (five, six, seven, eight, nine) and may include an ace high or low.

A straight flush is the best natural hand. A straight flush is a straight with five cards in a row of the same suit, such as 5-6-7-8-9.

If two or more hands have the same rank of four of a kind (two pairs of identical cards, for example), the highest-rank hand wins ties.

High card is used to break ties when no hand qualifies as a pair, flush, straight or royal flush. It is also used to break ties when there are several hands that qualify as a pair, flush or straight but all have different card values.