Poker is a card game that involves betting. Players must have at least a pair of cards to play. The player with the best 5-card hand wins the round and the money in the pot. During each betting interval, each player must look at her own cards and decide whether to call (put in the same amount as the highest bet that already exists) or raise. She may also choose to fold (throw out her cards and not engage with this hand).
The game has many variants, but all of them have the same basic rules: Each player puts in chips that represent his or her desired stake in the pot. Each player then receives two cards face up. Then the other players place their bets. When a player can’t make a better five-card poker hand than the one in front of him, she must “drop.” The first player to drop loses all the chips that she put into the pot.
The game evolved from a variety of earlier games, including three-card brag, a popular gentleman’s game at the time of the American Revolution and still played in the U.K. It became a staple of Wild West saloons and eventually reached Europe in the 1870s and 80s. The game’s popularity allowed for the introduction of new strategy elements, such as bluffing. From a legal viewpoint, the key question is whether skill dominates chance. It’s been found that, in the long run, the effects of luck diminish and cancel out over the course of several hands.