A card game played with two or more players, Poker has a variety of rules and betting procedures. In most forms of the game the object is to win the “pot”—the total of all bets made during one hand. To do this, a player must have either the highest ranking hand or make a bet that no other player calls.
Players place an ante, and then are dealt cards. When the betting comes around to them, they can choose to call (match the amount of the last bet), raise (bettet more than the previous amount) or check (pass on their turn). They must also be able to read the other players and watch for tells—unconscious habits that reveal information about a player’s hand.
The deal and order of play passes clockwise around the table after each hand. The player to the left of the button, or dealer, acts first in each betting interval. The player with the highest ranking poker hand wins the pot. The highest poker hand is a Royal Flush, which consists of all five cards in the same suit. In case of ties, the rank of the higher cards is used to determine which player has the higher hand.
The earliest written reference to the game appears in an 1845 edition of Hoyle’s Games by Henry F Anners. A number of other early vying games, not all of them poker, have been mentioned in this and subsequent editions of the book, but only the game of Poker has developed into the modern form.