Poker is a card game played between two or more players. Each player has two personal cards which are dealt face down, plus five community cards which are placed in the center of the table and bet on. Players form a five-card hand from these, and the player with the best hand wins the pot. Unlike chess, the twin elements of luck and skill are needed to win. Over time, the application of skill can almost eliminate the variance caused by luck.
The earliest known form of the game was played with a single 20-card deck and no draw, with bets made on a narrow range of combinations – one pair, two pairs, three of a kind, a full (four of a kind) or four of a kind (royal flush). The name ‘poker’ is an amalgamation of the French word for ‘bet’ and the anglicized form of ‘chip’ used in the English language.
In addition to the simple rules of the game, Poker offers many mechanisms by which players can strategically misinform each other about the value of their hands. This makes the game difficult to understand at first glance, but the more you play and watch other players, the quicker your instincts will develop.
Professional players are experts at extracting signal from noise across multiple channels and integrating information to exploit their opponents and protect themselves. In this way, they can achieve the highest possible winnings in any given situation.