Poker is a card game in which players bet that they have the best hand. Other players may call (match) the bet, raise it, or concede. Players can also bluff by betting that they have the best hand when in fact they do not, in order to win the pot without showing their cards. This element of bluffing is what makes the game so popular.
A standard deck of 52 cards is used in poker, along with a joker, which counts as either an ace or a wild card depending on the game. The most common hand is a straight, which consists of five consecutive cards of the same suit. Four of a kind is a more modest but still powerful hand, consisting of four cards of the same rank but different suits.
Each player has one turn per betting round, during which they can either check (leave the game), call, or raise. When they say “call” or “raise,” they put chips into the pot equal to or greater than the amount raised by the player before them. If they choose to not do this, they must discard their hand and drop out of the round (called folding).
Once the betting is complete, each player reveals their cards and the player with the best hand takes the pot. There may be multiple winners of the main pot and various side pots, however. The game is played using poker chips, and each player “buys in” for a set number of chips at the beginning of the hand.