In poker, as in life, you are dealt winning and losing hands. The goal is to maximise the value of your winning hands and minimise losses from your losing ones. This requires weighting risks against rewards, often without knowing the outcome of a hand beforehand. It also means bluffing when appropriate. This approach is known as MinMax.
The game can be played with a variety of cards, but the most common is a standard 52-card deck with a joker. The dealer is typically a human, but it can be automated in some games. The dealer’s position passes clockwise between players after each betting interval. During a betting interval, the player who has the lowest-valued chip puts it into the pot before anyone else can call it, raise it, or drop out (fold).
Each betting interval starts when a player makes a bet of one or more chips. A player who calls the bet is obligated to put in the same amount of chips as the person before them, or more if they want to raise it. In some variants, players can say “check” to stay in a hand without calling if no one before them has raised it.
At the end of a betting round, the remaining players reveal their hidden cards and evaluate their hands. The player with the best hand wins the pot. If no player has a winning hand, the money is returned to the players who called.