Poker is a card game in which players compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves (called the pot). A player’s strategy depends on his or her prediction as to what their opponents may hold. The goal is to maximise the value of winning hands and minimise losses from losing ones.
The game of Poker is famous for its bluffing possibilities. Mathematical game theory focuses on optimal strategies and bluffing is an essential part of them. In fact, the foundational 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern highlighted poker as an important example.
A hand of Poker involves a single round of betting. Each player must place a number of poker chips into the pot (representing money) at least equal to the total contributions made by the players before them. If a player declines to do this, he or she is said to fold, and he or she may not compete for the pot in that round.
A player can also choose to make no bet, which is called checking. However, the player must call a bet if one is raised since his or her last turn, or drop out of the round and forfeit any rights to the original pot. Alternatively, the player can establish a kitty of low-denomination poker chips before the start of play and then “cut” (take) a single chip from each pot in which there was more than one raise.
