Poker is played throughout the world, but it is probably still most popular in its country of origin, the USA. Poker is a five-card vying game played with standard playing-cards.

Poker is a family of card games involving betting and individual play, whereby the winner is determined by the ranks and combinations of their cards, some of which remain hidden until the end of the game. Poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the number of shared or "community" cards and the number of cards that remain hidden.

The betting procedures vary among different poker games in such ways as betting limits and splitting the between a high hand and a low hand.

A vying game ( betting on who has the best hand ) is one where, instead of playing their cards out, the players bet as to who holds the best card combination by progressively raising the stakes until either there is a showdown, when the best hand wins all the stakes (‘the pot’), or all but one player have given up betting and dropped out of play, when the last person to raise wins the pot without a showdown.

It is therefore possible for the pot to be won by a hand that is not in fact the best, everyone else having been bluffed out of play. One of Poker's earliest names was, in fact, ‘Bluff’. Bluffing is as essential to vying as finessing is to trick-play.

Poker has become very popular, and can provide a lot of fun. When it come to the money part, know when to stop losing money and get out of the game.