To play poker, you will need a standard 52-card deck, sometimes augmented with jokers. The initial deal is made to the left of the dealer, and any cards that would have been dealt face up are replaced with a new one. After the first round of betting, the turn to deal and bet passes from player to player. Each player has the right to shuffle the deck, but the dealer has the last right. The dealer then offers the shuffled pack to one of the players, who may choose to cut it.
The game is played with poker chips, and chips are almost always provided for players, unless a game involves less than seven participants. Each player has one or more chips – whites are the lowest valued, while reds are worth 10 or twenty or more. There are also blue chips, which represent two, four, or five reds, depending on how many players are in the game. Players “buy in” to the game by buying chips in advance, usually for the same amount of money.
The best high hand, known as a high hand, wins half of the pot. The best low hand wins the other half of the pot. To qualify for the low hand, a player must have five cards of a rank lower than eight. A low hand is called a “low hand” according to the A-to-5 lowball ranking, and five of a kind beats a straight flush. Any tie between wild cards is broken by secondary pairs and highest unmatched cards.