Official poker is a game of cards and bets that involves skill and strategy. The goal is to win the pot with a high-value hand by minimizing losses with bad hands and maximizing wins with good ones. The game is regulated by law and etiquette to ensure fair play, honesty, and ethical behavior. It is also played for a variety of reasons, including social interaction, meeting personal goals, and achieving emotional and spiritual needs.

When playing poker, the dealer is in charge of dealing the cards and determining which players are eligible to bet during each betting round. Each player is dealt two cards and can then choose to check, call, raise, or fold in the betting round. Once the betting is complete, the remaining players with hole cards show their cards in a showdown to determine a winner. The winning hands are determined according to the rules of each variant.

A key part of the game is the use of community cards that are dealt face up to all players. These cards are used in combination with a player’s own two cards to form a five-card poker hand. Some common community card hands include the flush, three of a kind, and straight. Players can also bluff during the showdown and try to get other players to fold better hands.

A standard way to stack chips is to separate them by color to make it easier for players to see how much they have in the pot. Tournament players often report their chip values by prefacing them with T$. This is because cash game chip values don’t usually correspond to actual dollar amounts.