Poker is a card game that requires skill and chance to win. It can be played for money or as a hobby. The game has many variants, but most involve betting and some form of bluffing. The game may be played by two to 14 players and the object is to win the pot – the sum of all bets made in a hand.

Players must ante (put in a small amount of money, called chips) to be dealt cards and start the betting round. They can then either call (match the previous player’s bet) or fold their hand. Players can also raise their bets if they think they have a strong hand. This is called bluffing and can often be successful if the players holding superior hands do not call the raised bet.

A poker hand consists of five cards. The value of a hand is in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency; thus a pair of sevens has the highest value while a full house contains three cards of one rank and two cards of another, and a straight has five consecutive cards of different suits.

After each round of betting, the cards are reshuffled and the players can choose to discard any number of their cards in order to improve their hand. The remaining cards determine the rank of the poker hand. In most poker games, the player with the highest-ranking poker hand wins the pot, unless all but one player drop out before the hand is shown. In this case, the winner is awarded all the chips in the pot. Depending on the rules of the poker game, a kitty is usually established to collect low-denomination chips from every pot. This money is used to pay for new decks of cards and other supplies.