Poker is a card game that can be played by two or more players. Each player has “chips” that he or she can bet with. The player’s goal is to make the best five-card hand using his or her own two cards and the community (shared) cards. The highest hand wins the pot. The player can also win by betting on the assumption that his or her opponents hold superior hands, even if they do not; this is called bluffing.
Depending on the variant of poker being played, some or all of the chips in play may be forced into the pot as antes or blinds. A player may call a bet, raise a bet, or drop out of the betting (a player who drops loses the chips that he or she has put into the pot).
After each round of betting is completed, the dealer shuffles the discarded cards and adds them to the bottom of the draw stack. Replacement cards are drawn from the deck for those discarded cards (if the rules of the game allow this).
Then, the final hand is made using the personal cards in the player’s hand and the community cards revealed on the table. The winning hand is the one with the highest value (as determined by mathematical frequency). Ties are broken by looking at the high card. The earliest contemporary references to poker can be found in J. Hildreth’s Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains (1836), and Joe Cowell’s published reminiscences (1844). The development of poker into more modern forms such as stud and draw poker occurred in the United States.