Poker is a card game where players compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by all other players (the pot). The player with the best 5-card hand wins the entire pot. There are many different variants of poker, including cash games and tournament play. The rules of each vary slightly, but the basic principle is to maximise your winning hands while minimising your losses on losing hands.
There are two ways to play poker: tight and aggressive. Tight playing means only betting on strong hands and folding weaker ones. Aggressive play involves raising your bets and bluffing. While it can be risky, it can also yield big wins.
The first step is to place an ante into the pot. Each player is then dealt three cards, one face down and two faces up. The player with the lowest hand starts, and then play proceeds clockwise around the table. After all players have acted, the player with the highest hand reveals their cards. Then there is a final betting phase, and the player with the best hand wins the pot.
There are a number of variants of poker, with different betting types, formats, events, stakes, and environments. Each of these has its own mathematics and theory, but in general the aim is to extract as much value as possible from your winning hands while minimizing losses from your losing hands. This is often referred to as min-max, or minimum-loss maximization.