Poker is a card game played by two or more players and involves betting before seeing your cards. This creates a pot right away and encourages players to play. You can learn the rules of poker by reading books or watching videos online. You can also play free poker games for fun with friends or other people in your area.

When you’re learning poker you should work on understanding ranges. This means going through the entire selection of possible hands that your opponent could have and working out how likely it is that they will have a hand better than yours. This is much more effective than simply trying to put your opponent on a particular hand and will help you to make more profitable decisions in the long run.

The first thing you should do is learn the basic rules of poker. Once you’ve done that you can move onto studying the different variants of the game. These include Straight Poker, Omaha, Stud Poker, Crazy Pineapple Poker and more.

The next step is to study charts so that you know what hands beat what. This will help you decide when to raise and when to call. You should also learn to read your opponents. Look for tells like eye movements, idiosyncrasies, hand gestures and betting behavior. For example if someone calls a lot of bets but suddenly raises a lot of money, they may be holding a very strong hand.