Poker is a card game played by a group of people sitting around a table. Players place bets with chips, and the player with the highest ranked hand at the end of the betting rounds wins the “pot.”

Each player starts with two cards in his or her hand, known as hole cards, while five community cards are dealt in three stages: a series of three, referred to as the flop; an additional card, called the turn; and finally, a final card, called the river. Each round is followed by a betting phase.

Players can choose whether to call a bet (to match it) or raise a bet (to increase it). When a player wants to check, they say “check” and pass the action to the next player. To raise a bet, the player must say “raise.”

The rank of standard poker hands is determined by their odds (probability). If two or more hands have the same rank, they split any winnings. Ties are broken by the highest unmatched cards or secondary pairs (in a full house, for example). There are some poker variations that use wild cards to create higher-ranked hands and make some hand combinations more powerful than others.

By tradition, the players may establish a special fund called a kitty that is used to pay for new decks of cards and other expenses related to the game. The players build up the kitty by “cutting” (taking one low-denomination chip from each pot in which there is more than one raise). When the game ends, any remaining chips in the kitty are divided among those still in the game.