Poker is a card game in which players place bets (representing money) into a central pot before being dealt cards. A single player has the privilege or obligation to make the first bet, and each player in turn must either call that bet by placing chips into the pot, raise it by putting in more than the amount raised by the previous player, or drop their hand and leave the game.
In most forms, each player is dealt two cards. There is then a round of betting, which begins with the player to the dealer’s left. Before the betting is started, however, a mandatory bet called a blind is made into the pot by the 2 players to the player’s left. This is done to give players something to chase and also prevent them from “calling off” their hands too early.
After the betting phase is finished, the final cards are revealed and the best 5-card hand wins the pot. If no player has a winning hand, the round is called a draw and the remaining chips are divided up amongst the players that have a high enough hand to remain in the game.
Expert players are able to extract the most value from their winning hands and minimise their losses from losing hands. They do this by exploiting their opponents through their knowledge of probability, mathematics, statistics and decision making. They use a range of information sources to do this, including in-person cues like body language and eye contact, as well as software and online data on their opponents’ behaviour.
