Poker is a card game where you place bets to win a hand. You make these bets with chips (representing money) that you put into the betting pool, called the pot. You can also raise a bet to add more money to the pot. If you raise, the other players must either call your new bet or fold.
An ante is a small bet all players are required to contribute before a hand begins. This helps the game balance out by forcing players to make a bet, even if they don’t have a good hand. It also helps prevent apathy at the table.
A hand is made up of 5 cards including your two personal cards and the community cards on the table. The best possible hand is a royal flush which is a 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of the same suit (all clubs, diamonds, hearts or spades).
The cards are dealt from a standard 53-card pack plus one joker (called “the bug”). A player may choose to cut or not to cut, depending on the rules of the game being played. Each player then has a turn to bet in one or more betting intervals. A player who bets exactly as much as the previous bettor is said to call, and a player who bets more is said to raise.
You can improve your poker game by learning how to read the other players at the table. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, but a lot of it comes down to studying patterns in betting behavior. Watching how long a player waits before calling, for example, can often indicate that they have a strong hand.