Poker is a card game with many variants, played by millions of people. It may be based on Asian gambling games like the 10th-century Chinese dominoes or the 16th-century Persian game As Nas, but the core concept is believed to have emerged in Europe from a 17th-century French game called Poque. By the early 19th century, it had reached the United States, where it became a staple of Wild West saloons and later took root in the American South.
In most Poker games, players begin by putting in a minimum amount of money to the pot (representing their chips). This is known as making a bet. Each player can either call a bet or raise it. If a player raises a bet, the other players must decide to either call it or to fold their hand and discard it. A player who cannot put in enough chips to compete for the pot is said to drop out.
When players have a winning hand, they win all the money that has been put down as buy-ins in the round. In some cases, no player wins the pot and the round ends in a draw.
At the end of each betting interval, the players reveal their hands. The best 5-card hand wins all the money in the pot. A winning hand can be made up of any combination of cards, including high cards, pairs (two cards of the same rank), three of a kind, four of a kind, and flushes.
