Poker is a card game played by two or more people. Players bet into a pot in the centre of the table when betting is allowed, and the highest hand wins the pot. There are a number of ways to win, including having the best hand, bluffing, or intimidating other players into folding. A strong player will try to maximise their winning hands while minimizing losses from losing ones. This is called a Min-Max strategy.

The game is not without its risks, however. There are many ways to lose a hand that are out of your control, and it is very easy for human nature to derail a good poker strategy. A good poker player must be able to ignore the temptation to make a bad call or bluff at the wrong time and stick with their plan despite the frustration of terrible luck.

Experts use mathematics to analyse the game and determine the optimal strategy. They study the betting behaviour of other players, making up for the lack of in-person knowledge by building behavioral dossiers of their opponents using software and other resources, and even buying records of other people’s hands. They also know how to extract signal from noise in the vast amount of data that is collected at a modern online poker table.