Poker is a card game where players compete for an amount of money (or chips) contributed by all the players, which is called the pot. Each player is dealt cards, which form a hand, and then they place those cards into the pot according to rules for that particular variant of poker. Players may raise, call or check their bets at each betting interval depending on the rules of the poker variant being played.
Usually, the best 5-card hand wins the pot, but in some cases there is a tie for the top-ranking hand and the prize money is split among the players with those hands. Often, there are several side pots in addition to the main pot that the winning player takes home. In those cases, the player who has won the most of the side pots will also win the main one.
The game’s most important rule is that you cannot show your cards to your opponents, so that they can see your rank in the hand. This prevents the game from being rigged. It also enables you to win by bluffing; you can bet that you have the best hand and frighten players into calling your bet even though they have a better one.
Poker has many different variants, but most of them share a similar set of rules. These rules include the standard poker hand ranking, a round of betting after each community card is added to the board, and various betting structures like no-limit, pot-limit or fixed limit.