Poker is a card game in which players wager money against one another. The goal of the game is to win a “pot,” or the total amount of bets placed during a deal. There are many variants of the game, but all involve betting and a winning hand.
A standard deck of 52 cards is used, although some games include jokers. There are four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs), but no suit is higher than any other. Each player is dealt three cards, and the highest hand wins. The highest possible hand is a royal flush, consisting of four matching cards of the same rank and five consecutively numbered cards of the same suit.
In most poker variants, the first player to the left of the button has the privilege or obligation to make the first bet. In turn, each player must place chips into the pot equal to or greater than the total contribution of the player to his immediate left.
A good poker writer needs to know the rules of the game, and also the nuances and tells of other players. A player’s body language can give away information about his or her hand. These are called tells and can include eye contact, facial expressions, body posture, and gestures. The more a poker writer knows about these tells, the better he or she will be at writing about the game. Also, it is important to be able to describe the action of a hand. For example, a player’s reactions to the cards that are played and the by-play between the players can be an excellent source of story material.