Poker is a card game in which players place bets of chips (representing money) into a betting pool, known as the pot. Each player has a choice to either call or raise the bet made by the player before him. Players can also fold, which drops them out of the hand and forfeits any amount they had placed in the pot. The winner of each round is the player with the best 5-card poker hand. Usually the winning player receives all of the money that was placed as buy-ins at the table.
The dealer of a poker game is responsible for shuffling the cards, dealing them out to each player and determining the rules of betting. In some games, a single player takes on the role of dealer for the entire game; in others, each player takes turns being the dealer. A chip is passed around the table to designate which player is the dealer for each round.
In poker, a high-card hand is made up of cards of the same rank (for example, three queens). A flush contains 5 consecutive cards of the same suit. A straight is five cards in sequence but of different suits. 3 of a kind is three cards of the same rank and two matching cards of another rank. A pair is two cards of the same rank, such as two sixes. There are many other types of poker hands, and the exact ranking of a hand depends on a combination of strategy, probability, psychology, and game theory.