Poker is a card game that involves betting. It requires considerable skill to minimize losses with poor hands and maximize winnings with good ones. A poker hand consists of five cards.

Before the dealer deals any cards a player has the option of making a bet. This is called opening the betting. Each player in turn has the option of calling, raising or folding.

A player can also bluff. In this case he bets that he has a superior hand and wins the pot if players holding inferior hands call his bet. It is important to learn the tells of other players. These include eye movements, idiosyncrasies, betting behavior and hand gestures.

After the first betting round is complete the dealer reveals three more cards face up on the table. These are community cards that anyone can use to make a poker hand. This is called the flop.

During the second betting round each player has an opportunity to put chips into the pot. Each chip represents a fraction of the total value of all the chips in the pot. A white chip is worth one unit of ante, a red chip is worth five whites, and so on. At the end of the game each player should have a total amount of chips in his possession equal to the number he contributed to the pot during his betting intervals. Depending on the rules of the poker variant being played, this may be more than 200 chips.