In poker, as in life, there is always a risk and reward involved. In order to win you must make decisions that weight your chances of a better outcome against the risk of losing. The goal of poker is to improve your odds of winning by betting money against other players. This can be achieved by playing with a strong starting hand, or by bluffing against players with weaker cards. In either case, a player’s tenacity and courage can triumph over a better hand.
The game of Poker evolved from a variety of earlier vying games. These include: Belle, Flux & Trente-un (French, 17th – 18th centuries), Post & Pair (English, 19th century), Brag (18th century to present), Brelan (19th -century French and American), Bouillotte (19th century – French and American).
After each player receives their 2 hole cards, a round of betting begins. The first player to act can choose to “call” (match) the bet of a player to their left, raise the bet by increasing the number of chips they put into the pot, or “fold” – meaning they abandon their hand and forfeit any further action.
While a lot of poker play is intuitive, there are also a significant number of poker players that analyze their opponents and bets in order to maximise their profits. Hence the rise of GTO (Gaming Theory Optimization) strategies, which are used to identify weaknesses in an opponent’s play. The rise of these mathematical approaches to the game of poker has transformed it from a game of intuition into a decontextualised quantitative analysis of hands played.