Poker is a card game played by two or more players with a goal of winning the pot (a bet made on all hands at the table). It involves strategy, chance and psychology. Poker has become a popular test-bed for artificial intelligence research because it requires decision-making under uncertainty, risk assessment and deception, similar to problems faced in real life.

The player whose hand beats the highest one wins the pot. The rules vary between different forms of the game but the basic idea is that a player can only win the pot if they have a higher-ranking poker hand than everyone else at the table. Players are also encouraged to bluff, but this is a risky tactic and often loses money over time.

Amateur players were drawn to the game in huge numbers, investing small chunks of their income in pursuit of a profit. This filtered upward to a smaller group of top players who took the game far more seriously.

Professional players tend to take a methodical approach to the game, analyzing the odds and studying their opponents’ tells in order to make better decisions. Studies have shown that the brains of expert poker players show fewer impulses and are more focused on logic than amateur players, who are prone to emotional frustration and a lack of self-control. These findings suggest that mental training techniques, similar to those used by athletes, may be effective in improving a poker player’s performance.