Poker is a popular card game where players compete with each other. The object of the game is to have the best five-card hand. The player who has the highest ranking hand will win the entire pot. The pot is the amount of money bet during a hand. If no player has the best hand, the money will be split among all players.
A pair in poker is two cards of the same rank. Any third card is of a different rank. The higher the pair, the better the hand. For example, 6-6-4-3-2 beats the hand of 5-A-K-Q. Similarly, the higher pair beats the lower pair. A pair of jacks beats a pair of tens.
In theoretical poker, players can double their stakes after every raise, which is not always the case in actual poker. However, the stakes tend to become very large after three or four raises. This can make it difficult to raise the stakes further. Therefore, most house rules limit stake raises to the previous raise amount.
Poker is played with a standard deck of 52 cards. Various variations use more or fewer packs, and sometimes add jokers. The cards are ranked from Ace high to ace low. Each hand is made up of five cards, unless it has a pair of aces. Some games contain Wild Cards, which are non-ranking cards that may be of any suit.