Poker is a card game played by two or more players. The goal is to make the best poker hand by betting that your cards are better than those of your opponents. A player wins the pot if they have the best poker hand, or if their opponents are scared off by their bet and fold.

There are many variants of poker, but most of them require a minimum of six players. Each player buys in for a specified amount of money. The money is represented by chips, with a white chip being worth a single unit (or minimum ante), and a red chip representing five whites. Depending on the rules of your poker game, you may also use other colored chips for higher stakes.

Once all the players have their two hole cards, a round of betting begins. The first player to act places a bet, which is the sum of the mandatory bets put in by the two players to his or her left. If any player is able to raise the bet for his or her turn, he or she becomes the winner of that betting interval and takes the entire pot/all bets.

When writing a poker story, it is important to keep in mind that you are essentially telling a drama about the psychology of human behavior and the sleight of hand needed to win at it. In addition to the rules of the game, you should include anecdotes – stories about specific hands that are interesting and memorable. You should also include a discussion of tells – unconscious habits that reveal information about a person’s hand to the other players, which can be as simple as a change in posture or as complex as a facial expression.