Poker is a card game that consists of betting rounds in which players compete to form winning hands by placing chips into the pot, which is the common name for a collection of all the chips bet. Unlike many other casino games, poker has no set number of cards or rules for what constitutes a winning hand. Each player is dealt two cards face down and a round of betting follows in which players may raise or lower their stakes. The winner is the player who places the highest bet.

During the early to mid-2000s, Texas hold’em gained in popularity and replaced seven-card stud as the most popular form of poker in U.S. casinos and on televised tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. The game was modified in the mid-2010s with the addition of the community card in each hand, which increases the number of possible combinations. This increase led to the development of the flush and three-card straight, further expanding the popularity of the game.

In a regular poker game, between two and 10 players sit around a table. Each player is required to place a small bet before the game begins and a large bet at some point during the round. Each player is given a supply of poker chips, with the white chip representing a unit, or minimum bet. Other colored chips represent a range of values with one red chip being worth five whites, for example.