The game of Poker is a fast-paced card game where players compete to make the best 5-card hand using their own two cards and the five community cards that are dealt face up on the table. Players use chips to place bets on their chances of getting a good Poker hand. When the betting interval ends, each player shows his or her hand. The highest hand wins the pot. If there is a tie, the high card breaks it.
The cards used in Poker come from a standard deck of 52 cards with the suits ranked (from highest to lowest) as Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, and 9 (although some variations may change the suit). A standard set of poker chips is also used to indicate how much a player wants to bet (the amount he or she “buys in”). A white chip is worth the minimum ante/bet; a red chip is worth five whites; and a blue chip is usually worth twenty or more whites.
The most interesting part of writing about Poker is the people involved – their reactions to the cards, their by-play, and their strategies. To bring these aspects to life, the writer should keep a file of hands that are relevant to the topic and write about them as they unfold. The author should also focus on describing the tells – the unconscious habits that reveal information about a player’s cards. Those tells can be as simple as eye contact or as complex as body language and gestures.