Poker is a card game in which players bet chips on the outcome of the cards they are dealt. While the game has elements of luck, over time skill can eliminate the variance inherent in chance.

In a round of poker, each player places an initial amount of money into the pot, called a forced bet. These are usually in the form of an ante or blind. Depending on the rules of a particular poker variant, players may also be required to place additional chips in a subsequent betting round, known as raises. A player who calls a raise must then decide to continue betting, fold, or call a third bet of an equivalent size.

Players can win the pot by having the highest poker hand, which is comprised of five cards. There is one final round of betting, a showdown, where the top hand wins the entire pot. Alternatively, a player can win before the showdown by having an excellent bluff.

Despite the fact that poker has many elements of luck, it is a game of skill because it can be learned by studying the odds of getting each individual card. This can be done through probability theory, which is the study of random events. Ingo Fiedler and Jan-Philipp Rock from the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg developed a new method for this analysis. They analyzed the data of over 50,000 online players and found that poker is a game of skill.