Poker is a card game with millions of fans. It’s a game of deception and storytelling that requires attention to detail to be successful. Every call, check, and reveal gives your opponents bits of information they can use to build a story about you. If you’re too obvious about what you have in your hand, it’s going to be hard to get paid off when you have a strong hand and impossible for your bluffs to work.

To make your article about poker interesting to a wide audience, you’ll need to focus on the people involved in the game, and their reactions to the cards that are dealt. Good poker writers are able to paint pictures in their readers’ heads by using their words. For example, if a player’s facial expression changes or their body language gets more animated when they’re thinking about the cards in their hand, you can use these details to create a compelling story about how that change impacts the way that player plays the game.

A common mistake that many players make is playing it safe by only betting when they have a strong hand. However, pursuing safety often results in missing opportunities where a moderate amount of risk could yield a much larger reward. This type of mistake can also be referred to as overplaying. It is often made by players who are afraid to show any weakness in their hands, so they continue to call even mediocre hands like second or third pair or chase all sorts of ludicrous draws hoping that they will hit the miracle card that will give them a winner.