In official poker, players compete for an amount of money (or chips) contributed by each player. The game is a combination of luck and skill, with the best players winning. During each betting round, players can check (call the raise of another player without raising themselves), raise or fold. The player with the highest hand wins the pot.

In poker games with more than 10 players, the number of cards dealt is divided into betting intervals – rounds in which players can either call the bet of an opponent or raise it. Betting intervals may be of different length, but in all cases they must end when the total amount of raised bets equals that of the blinds and antes.

There are four common forms of betting limits: no limit, pot limit, fixed-limit and spread limit. A poker tournament’s printed blind schedule should list these limits, or a tournament timer will show them.

If a player leaves a poker table while a hand is still in progress, they must wait an hour or so before returning to the same table with the same game and limits unless they have the permission of the floor. This is to prevent them from “ratholing” by leaving a tournament after a large win and then immediately returning for a smaller stake.

On occasions, a player will be found to have used multiple accounts in an online tournament to get ahead of other players. A notorious example of this was Natalie “TheV0id” Teltscher, who won the 2007 World Championship of Online Poker by using her sister’s account to ghost play for her.