Poker is a card game that requires skill and good decision making. Ideally, you play only with money that you are comfortable losing. If you have a partner that can pick up the financial slack in case your session isn’t so great, then you can take more risks on the table. However, this doesn’t mean you should go all in with a small stack and hope for the best. It is better to err on the side of caution and only play with an amount you can afford to lose, especially when starting out.

The game of Poker is a series of betting intervals called “rounds.” At the beginning of each round, two mandatory bets called blinds are put into the pot by players to the left of the dealer. Players can then choose to call, raise, or fold their hand and not participate in the round.

The earlier your position, the more risk you have to take in each round because you can’t see what everyone else has in their hand. You have to read your opponents actions based on what you know about them and their tendencies. Professional poker players are experts at extracting signal from noise and at integrating information from multiple channels to both exploit their opponents and protect themselves. The first step is to observe other players, analyzing how they act and thinking about how you would react in their situation to build quick instincts.