Whether you’re playing online, or in a land-based game, the goal of Poker is to bet your chips on the hand with the best cards. The highest-ranking hand wins the pot. If two players have identical hands, the high card breaks the tie.
Poker is usually played with a standard 52-card deck. Some games allow for jokers as wild cards. Some games allow players to shuffle their own cards, while others use a standard pack.
Poker is also played with three-card Monte, and Spit-in-the-Ocean. In these games, each player is dealt seven cards, and each player must make a bet. If the players do not all fold, the pot will be split between them. If all players fold, the winner is the one with the highest-ranking hand.
The hand with the highest-ranking card is called the kicker. It’s the highest-ranking card left in the deck in a high-card hand. If there are ties, the player with the highest-ranking card outside of four of a kind wins.
A flush is a set of five cards of the same suit. A full house is a set of three cards of the same rank and two cards of a different rank. A straight is five cards in sequence. A four-of-a-kind is a set of four cards of the same rank. A pair of aces is the lowest-ranking pair.
A pair of kings isn’t very good off the deal, but if you have a pair of kings and you’re the last player to bet, you can bet that you’ve got the highest-ranking pair.
