Poker is a card game in which players bet their chips against one another. It is a game that requires quick thinking and deception, as players try to determine whether their opponents are holding strong hands or just bluffing. A good poker player can win a lot of chips by betting that they have the best hand, and other players must either call (match) their bet or fold. In the earliest games, players bet at low rates to ensure that every hand would be played, but later game structures allowed for larger bets. This led to the development of a variety of betting strategies, with John von Neumann showing in the late 1940s that, if players bet large enough both with their highest and lowest hands, they will not lose more than break even in the long run.

A standard 52-card pack, plus one or two jokers, is used. The game is usually played in tournaments with a structure that specifies the number of rounds and how much time players have to complete their games.

The basic rules of poker are as follows: A hand consists of five cards and has a value in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency, so that the rarer a combination of cards is, the higher the hand rank. The most valuable hands are the Royal Flush, which includes an Ace, King, Queen, and Jack of the same suit; Four of a Kind; Full House (three cards of the same rank and two cards of a different rank, such as three eights and two fours); Straight; and Flush.