Poker is a game of cards played with an objective of making a five-card poker hand using a combination of a player’s own cards and the community cards dealt. While there is a lot of luck in the game, there is also considerable skill and psychology involved in minimizing losses with bad hands and maximizing winnings with good ones.
The game is played from a standard pack of 52 cards with the addition of one or two jokers (optional). Some games require an initial contribution to the pot, called an ante. Other games may require a fixed amount to be raised for each round. Some games have wild cards, while others specify which cards are wild (dueces, one-eyed jacks).
Chips are used to represent amounts of money during play, providing consistency among players and better tracking of action by security systems. The chips are usually the same color and value, with white as the lowest denomination.
Almost all casinos and cardrooms use colored chips rather than dollar bills to facilitate a faster and more secure game. Chips are commonly white, red, green and blue with different colors indicating different values.
Rules governing the game of poker include Rule 53-B: A player skipped by OOT must defend his right to act. If he has reasonable time and does not speak up by the time substantial action occurs OOT to his left, the floor will render a decision on how to treat the skipped hand. Another rule relates to proper mucking of a poker hand. It is improper to expose a player’s cards with action pending, unless it is necessary for game balance or for security reasons.