The game of Poker involves each player attempting to make the best five card hand using their two personal cards (sometimes referred to as your “hand”) and the community cards. Each player puts up a wager equal to the amount of chips they have in play. Once the betting phase is over, a fifth card is dealt (“River”). The player who has the best hand wins all the money in the pot.
The most important thing to remember when playing Poker is that the strength of your hand is based on the opponent’s holdings, not your own. It is often worth trying to force players to fold with strong hands, rather than trying to call weak hands. The goal is to make it costly for other players to stay in the hand with worse hands, so that you can push them out early.
One key to analyzing the opponents is to watch them when they are not involved in the hand. This is when you can get a better sense of how they react to different situations, and how they are reading other players’ behavior.
Keeping a file of poker hands is also helpful. This allows you to determine the rank of a particular hand, so that you can quickly analyze whether it is worth trying to hit a draw. For example, if you have Q-6-4 and another player has K-K you should definitely play, but if the other person is on A-A then your Kings will lose 82% of the time.