Poker is a game of chance where you will be dealt winning hands and losing ones. Your aim is to extract the maximum value from your winning hands and minimise losses when you have a worse one. This is known as minmax. You will also need to bluff occasionally in order to get your opponents to fold their better hands and make money even when you have the losing hand.

The more you play and watch poker, the more instinctive your decisions will become. This is a key difference between professionals and casual players. The pros have a balanced approach where they combine solid strategy with well-timed tactics. This allows them to exploit the weaknesses of casual players who only rely on reactive moves.

Another thing to consider when playing poker is variance. This is the difference between the mathematically expected result and the actual outcome. For example, if you deal AA against KK ten times in a row, it should win eight out of ten times. However, there are a lot of things that can go wrong to make your results fluctuate wildly.

You should always try to be aggressive when you have a good hand, but be careful not to over-bluff. The amount you should bluff depends on a whole host of factors, including the strength of your opponent’s hand, the board, their range and the pot size. It is also important to be able to read tells, which are unconscious habits or gestures that reveal information about a player’s hand.