Poker is a card game where players make bets in rounds with one or more cards being dealt to each player. The player to the left of the dealer starts the betting. Each player must place into the pot (representing money, for which poker is almost always played) at least as many chips as the total contribution of the player who went before him. The player with the best hand at the end of the last betting round wins the pot. This is the fundamental principle underlying the game, although the game can be played in a more complex form that allows for additional strategy.
Professional poker players are experts at extracting signal from noise across multiple channels to exploit opponents and protect their own hands. They use information about other players’ physical cues, as well as about the history of their own bluffs and folds. They are skilled at building behavioral dossiers on their opponents and buying records of other players’ “hand histories.”
The twin elements of fortune and skill are essential to the success of any game of poker, but the application of skill can eliminate much of the variance of luck over time. The most important thing to remember when writing about a poker game is that the real drama takes place in the players’ reactions to the cards, their by-play and the by-play between them. If these elements are missing, the description will feel lame or gimmicky.