Poker is a card game where players wager money on the outcome of a hand. It can be played by two to seven players. It is a game of chance, but players can also win by using skill and psychology. The winner of a hand is the player with the highest-ranked cards. The amount of money bet during a hand is called the pot. Players place chips into the pot voluntarily if they believe their bet has a positive expected value or for strategic reasons (such as bluffing). The most common poker hands are: ace, king, queen, jack, and ten.
Poker’s likeliest immediate ancestor is poque, which likely descends from the German pochen (‘to knock’). It is also closely related to the Renaissance games of as nas and primero, the French game of brelan, and the English game brag. The latter introduced bluffing into the game and may have been inspired by brelan.
When a hand is complete, the players show their cards and the player with the best hand wins the pot. If there is no highest hand, the pot is split evenly amongst the players who remain in the game. In this way, poker mimics real life. Resources must be committed before all of the information is known, and in many cases, no one has absolute command over the facts until the hand is completed. The game thus encourages a high degree of risk-taking and strategic thinking.