While there are many different forms of poker, most share a few fundamental rules. The game can be played socially for pennies or in a casino for thousands of dollars. It has become a huge international phenomenon. The game has a professional Tournament Directors Association, known as the TDA, which is working to standardize rules across all major tournaments and games around the world.

There are also specific rules about how chips must be stacked and the number of cards dealt per player. These are important for a consistent and fair game, which is a key requirement for a legitimate poker environment.

Breaking poker rules isn’t easy to get away with, even if it clearly breaches a player’s integrity or shows bad gamesmanship. In live poker, dealers are under intense pressure to deal with a large number of hands in the time available and have very little opportunity to spot an infraction. Players must speak up when they see a dealer breaching a rule, and call the floor manager over to make a ruling.

Poker chip values don’t necessarily correspond to real dollar amounts, but they must be assigned in order for players to keep track of their stacks during a tournament. Tournaments typically report the amount of a player’s stack by prefacing it with T$. A standard poker chip set contains whites, reds and blues or greens, which are typically stacked in stacks of 20. The color of each chip represents its value, allowing players to look at another player’s stack and quickly determine how much they have in their own.