Poker is a card game that involves betting and elements of chance. It is a game in which players make decisions that affect the outcome of the hand based on their understanding of probability, psychology and game theory. The goal is to be able to extract signal from the noise and exploit your opponents, which is why most professional players are experts at integrating information from multiple channels such as their own visual cues, their own body language, their own behavioral dossiers of their opponents and even buying records of other player’s ‘hand histories’.
In most games, a forced bet (an ante or blind bet) is made before players are dealt cards. Once the cards are dealt, players then place bets into a pot in the middle. Once all bets are in, the highest hand wins the pot. During the course of play, bets may increase or decrease in size.
A hand consists of 5 cards of matching rank, or four of a kind (four cards of the same rank) and a high card outside (4 of a kind beats two pairs, three of a kind beats one pair, etc). Ties are broken according to the rules for High Card. A hand can also consist of a straight or a flush, which are a combination of five consecutive cards of the same suit. A full house, on the other hand, consists of 3 matching cards of one rank and 2 matching cards of another rank and one unmatched card.