Poker is one of the most popular card games in the world today. It can be played at casinos or online via poker websites and it continues to grow in popularity among gamblers all over the globe. Although there are numerous poker game variations, there are some basic rules and concepts which apply to all across the board. If you are a beginner and are just starting to play poker, here are some basics that you need to know to become a good poker player.

1. Make sure that you have a good understanding of the order of cards that are in the deck. Basically, the weakest card would be 2 and cards go up in value until 10. After this, the face cards are ordered from jack, queen, king and ace.

2. You should also learn poker hands. Some of the basic poker hands would be the: pair, which are two of the same cards; two pair, which would be two separate pairs; three of a kind or three of the same kind of card on your hand; straight, or five consecutive cards from any suit or any combination of suits; flush, or five random cards from the same suit, a full house or a combination of a pair and a three of a kind; four of a kind, which would four cards of the same kind; straight flush, which is a combination of a straight and a flush; and lastly, a royal flush, which is a straight flush starting with an ace, counting down.

3. You also need to know the order of the winning poker hands. This would be (from the strongest to the weakest): the royal flush, the straight flush, a four of a kind, a full house, a flush, a straight, a three of a kind, a two pair, a one pair, and the highest single card in your hand.

4. You must also know how cards are dealt in poker, which would mainly depend on the type of poker game you are playing.

5. Another important thing that you need to learn to play poker would be the basic poker terms. Some terms that you should be familiar about would be raise, check and fold.