Poker is a card game in which players wager and sometimes reveal their cards. The highest ranked hands win the pot. This is the basic principle of poker, but there are a variety of different games with subtle differences.

Most variants of Poker require forced bets, called antes and blind bets, to initiate play. These bets are made by the players to the left of the dealer and are put into a shared pool called the pot. Players may choose to fold or call these bets depending on their individual strategies.

After the ante and blind bets are made, each player is dealt 2 cards face-down (hidden from other players). These cards are called a player’s hole cards or pockets. A betting phase begins immediately.

One or more additional cards are then dealt face up in the center of the table. These are called the flop. There is another round of betting and each player now has 5 cards to build their final hand.

Some poker players use signals to misinform other players about the strength of their hands. This is a form of deception called slow-playing, which aims to induce players with weaker hands to call or raise bets to increase the payouts for the stronger hands.

A player’s final hand is determined by a showdown where each player must reveal their cards. The player with the best 5-card hand wins the pot. If no players have a strong hand, the remaining cards are collected into the pot as low-denomination chips. Often, the players who remain in the game will agree to split this money in some way before the end of the session.