Poker is a card game that requires skill and strategy to win. It is played with a standard pack of 52 cards plus some additional cards called jokers. The cards are ranked from high to low: Ace, King, Queen, Jack and 10, followed by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Each suit has different ranks, but no one suits is better than any other.

When a hand is played the players put their bets into a central pot. The player with the highest hand wins the pot. The hand can be any number of five cards but a straight or flush is generally considered the best. If more than one person has a straight or flush the higher card wins (five aces beats five kings and so on).

At the start of each hand players must make forced bets, usually an ante and a blind bet. The dealer then shuffles the cards and deals each player a hand starting with the player to their left. The turn to ante and to bet passes around the table clockwise between hands.

Observing your opponents and looking for tells is very important in poker. However, learning to read tells takes time and practice. A tell is a change in your opponent’s body language that gives away information about the strength of his or her hand. The shortest tell is the most reliable, but you must learn to sift through many of them as they come and go.