Poker is a card game in which players make bets that their cards are better than those of their opponents. The player with the best hand wins. Sometimes a good bluff can win the pot even when you don’t have the best cards. In both poker and life it is not always the best player that wins, but sometimes the one who has the most courage and tenacity.
Some important words used in poker are bluff, call, fold and raise. A bluff is when you bet with bad cards in the hopes that other players will call and raise you. A good bluff requires patience and reading the other players. A raise is when you bet more than the previous player, but less than the last one.
A fold is when you throw your cards away and quit the hand. You don’t want to keep betting money at a hand that isn’t going to win, especially in a tournament.
When the flop is dealt, there is another round of betting starting with the player to the left of the dealer. A flop is a combination of 3 cards. The next step is to see if any of the players have a high hand, called a straight or flush. A straight contains 5 consecutive cards of the same suit. A flush has 3 matching cards of the same rank and 2 unmatched cards. Three of a kind is three cards of the same rank, two pair is 2 matching cards of different ranks and one unmatched card, and a high card is any card that’s higher than the rest of the cards in the hand.