Poker is a card game that can be played by any number of players. There are forms of poker suitable for 2 to 14 players but in most games the ideal number is 6 or 8. In a poker game each player receives two cards face down and one card face up, then there are betting intervals and finally a showdown (revealing all cards). The object of the game is to win the pot, the aggregate sum of all bets made during a deal. A player can only win the pot with a high poker hand or if they make a bet that no other players call.
At the start of a poker game each player buys in for some amount of chips (representing money, for which poker is almost always played) and then begins betting in turn. In each betting interval a player must either “call” the bet of the player to their left by putting into the pot that many chips as the previous player did or raise that bet (and thereby increase the total contribution they make to the pot).
The highest poker hand is a royal straight flush, consisting of a 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of the same suit. The next best hand is 4 of a kind which is four cards of the same rank (such as Ks-Kd-Jd-5c-3d). The lowest poker hand is a pair of low cards, for example 7-5-4-3-2 in two suits.
