Poker is a card game that involves skill, strategy, and mostly chance. Players bet chips on the outcome determined by the cards randomly distributed to them. The player with the best five-card hand wins all of the money in the pot. Occasionally, there will be a tie among players with the best hands and the winning player shares the pot.

The opening rounds of a poker game are often slow and cautious, with low bets from players who don’t want to reveal their hand. But as the action gets a bit more heated, you can expect to see an increasing number of raises and calls. This is because the players start to bet on their chances of making a good hand.

As the betting continues, players will often use tactics to mislead each other about the strength of their hands. They can do this by raising bets when they think they have a strong hand, or by calling other players’ bets to try to get them to fold with weak hands.

The goal of poker is to win as many chips (or money if playing in a cash game) as possible by winning hands. If you can make enough strong hands in a row, then you will be the one left standing at the end of the betting phase and you will collect the entire pot. Some poker games even have rules for how the money is shared between players after the final showdown.