The game of poker is a card game in which players bet chips (money) while playing against each other. Each player is dealt two cards and aims to make the best five card hand out of them and the community cards (the flop, turn and river). Poker is a game of incomplete information in which it is impossible to know your opponents’ cards, and betting is an important part of the strategy. The foundational 1944 book by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, used poker as a key example of the theory of optimal decision making.
A lot of amateur poker players think that they should slowplay their strong value hands in order to outplay and trap their opponents, but this is a mistake that will often backfire. You can easily lose a lot of money by playing your strong hands passively, and the best way to win is to capitalize on your opponents’ mistakes. They will call with mediocre hands and chase all sorts of crazy draws in hopes that you’re bluffing, and this can cost them big money.
You should always try to minimize the number of players you are up against by raising early pre-flop, especially with strong hands like AK. This will make it much harder for somebody to beat you with an unlucky flop, and it will also prevent them from raising when they have a good hand.