Poker is a card game in which players wager an amount of money or chips – called the pot – on the outcome of the round. Players must make a hand of cards whose value is higher than that of their opponents’ to win the pot. If a player has the best hand, they receive all of the bets that were placed into the pot on that round. In some variants of the game, each player is required to place a forced bet (called an ante or blind bet) into the pot before they are dealt any cards.

After a player sees their cards, they can choose to check (decline to bet but keep their own cards), call or raise. A raise must be at least equal to the total amount of money raised by all players on that betting round. If a player raises, their action is taken over by the next player to their left.

The game has many variants, but in all of them the objective is to acquire and hold as many chips as possible. Professional poker experts spend a lot of time studying their opponent’s behavior and analyzing behavioral cues, including body language. They also use software to build behavioral dossiers on their opponents, enabling them to extract the signal from a lot of noise. They also learn to weigh their chances of winning by bluffing. However, in life as in poker, the best hand doesn’t always win, and sometimes a player’s tenacity can triumph over those with better starting hands.