Poker terms & definitions | The definitive poker glossary

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2E – A two-street geometric bet sequence that bets a certain percentage of the pot on one street, such that a bet of an equal percentage of the pot on the next street would cause the player to be all-in.
2+2 – (a) 4. (b) An online forum and book publishing company that was the de facto town hall for the poker community during poker’s go-go years of the early 2000’s. It was created by Mason Malmuth in the late 1990’s, and for over a decade (prior to the ascent of social media) it was where everything poker was discussed. If a pin dropped in the poker world, 2+2 heard it. Notably, 2+2 was also a place where people gathered to discuss strategy with other thoughtful players, when accurate and reliable information was scarce.
3-bet– A second raise on a given street of betting. The first raise is considered the 2-bet, so the 3-bet is the second raise. A 4-bet is thus the third raise put in on a single street of betting.
3E – A three-street geometric bet sequence that bets a certain percentage of the pot on one street, such that bets of an equal percentage of the pot, on the subsequent two streets, would put the player all-in.
4th (Fourth) Street – (a) In flop games, the fourth community card, which is dealt by itself. Also known as the turn. (b) In stud games, the fourth card dealt to each player at the table.
5th (Fifth) Street – (a) In flop games, the fifth community card, which is dealt by itself. Also known as the river. Author James McManus borrowed this term by titling his epic story of the World Series of Poker, Positively Fifth Street, a play on the title of the Bob Dylan song, Positively Fourth Street. (b) In stud games, the fifth card dealt to each player at the table.
6-max - A poker game with a maximum of six players per table.
6th (Sixth) Street – (a) In stud games, the sixth card dealt to each player at the table. (b) In any poker game, the table talk that happens between hands. This usage was coined by Tommy Angelo. Most people play sixth street poorly, and it can be a gold mine of information for superior players.
7-2 game – A type of carnival game, in which any player who wins a hand with seven-deuce (generally agreed to be the worst starting hand in hold’em) is paid a bounty by all other players at the table. Such bounties can range from one to five big blinds, or more.
8-or-better – Any form of split pot poker where the pot is split between the best high hand, and the best lowball hand. However, the 8-or-better qualification means that the lowball hand must be at least an 8-high or better. That is, the highest ranked card must be an eight or lower. If no such hand exists, the high hand gets the entire pot.
9-max – A poker game with a maximum of nine players per table. This term is usually reserved for online poker. Contrast with 6-max, which is a popular format online.

A

Action – (a) The player at the table whose turn it is to act. Usage: “Sir, the action is on you, if you wish to look up from your phone.” (b) A game that is seeing a lot of raises and a lot of chips going into the pot. “I got a change over to Table #5. The action there was insane.” (c) See also In action.
Add-on – The opportunity to make one final rebuy at the end of the rebuy period in a tournament. Add-ons are unique in that any player may purchase the add-on, whereas they must be below a certain chip count (or busted out) to rebuy.
Ai-ya! (哎呀 in Cantonese) – An expression of dismay, pain, and/or frustration. Generally expressed upon seeing an opponent’s superior hand, or worse, successful bluff. The correct usage of this phrase: “What? You have a set? Ai-ya!”
Alley-oop – A raise given extra force by an unexpected bet in front of it. Taken from the basketball term, an alley-oop can happen when the raiser was planning to bet, but somebody bets in front of them. Now they can raise on top of that bet, usually with the implication of putting extra pressure on other players in the pot. Example: Preflop, there are four limps to Nate on the button, and he raises with . All four limpers, including the cutoff, call. The flop comes . Three players check, but now the cutoff bets. Nate strongly suspects that the cutoff has either a jack, or some kind of draw, both of which he’s beating. He can now raise, blowing out the other players, and play heads-up against the cutoff, with dead money in the pot. The cutoff has thrown Nate a perfect alley-oop. This term was first described by Andrew Brokos and Carlos Welch in their Thinking Poker podcast.
All-in – (a) A player who has put all of their chips into the pot, and can do no further betting. By the rules of table stakes, they cannot be forced out of the pot, and have an interest in the pot for which they contributed an equal share of the chips. (b) The act of putting all your chips in the pot, by announcing to the dealer, “I’m all-in.” What one does not do is reach behind one’s stacks of chips and push them all forward with a threatening sneer, no matter what some TV shows and commercial ads suggest.
Alternate – A player who is waiting for a seat in a tournament. That is, the tournament is currently ‘full’, in that there are no seats available for more players. People on the alternate list wait for players to bust out, at which point an alternate can buy in and be seated.
Angle – A technique to gain an unfair edge in a poker game, while staying within the technical rules. 'Angle shot' is a synonym. Those who do it are called angle shooters. They are also called thieving rat bastards. A classic angle is to check out-of-turn, making your opponent believe you’re going to check behind them, then raising when they bet. Were it not for angle shooters, poker rule books would be 30% of their current length.
Ante – A specific number of chips that each player contributes to the pot before cards are dealt. Antes or blinds are necessary to make any poker game mathematically interesting, in that they provide players an incentive to win the existing pot. Without such incentive, it would be mathematically incorrect to voluntarily put any chips into the pot. Antes are common in tournaments – they are less common in cash games. See also Big blind ante. 'Ante' is one of the many poker terms which has fully integrated into the American vocabulary. “He was doing some stock investing but it was all penny-ante stuff” meaning that the investor was making very small investments.
Any two cards. (Also 'ATC') – An indication that a player in a hold’em game could have any two cards in the deck. In theory, this applies to situations such as the flop in a bomb pot, where all the players do have ‘infinite range,’ and any player could hold any two cards. In practice, it’s also used to suggest that a player isn’t overly selective about the cards they might take to that point in the hand. Usage: “I mean, he called a raise in the big blind, then checked and called a B10 on the flop. He could have ATC.” There is a spell in the Book of Poker Incantations called “Vincere duos!” It’s typically used as a last desperate attempt when the player is putting their last chips in the pot, either because the pot odds demand it, or because they’re tilted and no longer give a damn. It’s true that any two cards can win, but that doesn’t mean that they do very often.
App game – A genre of online poker sites which run on mobile applications (‘apps’), as opposed to downloaded clients from regulated online poker sites. App games are unregulated, and players deposit and withdraw funds via cash or cash app transfers to and from shadowy agents. Such sites are sketchy at best, and Ponzi schemes at worst.
As played – The point in a hand history discussion where somebody giving their opinion about the hand asserts that the hero made a terrible error, but there’s nothing to do about it, so let’s try to mitigate the damage from there. Usage: “You never should have bet the flop, but as played, fold the turn.” The phrase also has many uses IRL, such as, “I told you not to go on a date with that guy last night. As played…”

B

Bxxx – Shorthand description of a bet of xxx% of the pot. Because correct strategy revolves around the percentage of the pot one is betting, it’s useful to have a quick way of saying, “You should bet 30% of the pot.” “B30” is easier.
Backdoor draw – Any draw which can’t complete with the next card, but could after two or more cards. For instance, suppose you are playing hold’em, and have the ace of hearts and ten of hearts. If the flop contains exactly one heart, you can’t make your flush on the turn. However, if both the turn and river cards are hearts, you will make a flush. Thus, on the flop, you have a backdoor flush draw.
Backer – An investor who puts up money for somebody to play tournaments or cash games, with the profits being split according to some predetermined agreement. The person doing the actual playing is referred to as a horse, and a backer with multiple horses is said, not surprisingly, to have a stable. Backing arrangements are the source of much of the drama and animosity in poker, as they rarely work out well for the backer, and are routinely a freeroll for the horse. And yet, backers and horses continue to make such deals. See also, Make-up.
Bad beat – A situation in which a hand that was statistically unlikely to win got the necessary card or cards to ultimately take down the pot. Bad beats are part and parcel of the game, but to hear people talk about them, one would think that they are akin to lightning striking the table.
Bad beat story – Bad beat stories are a plague that infests poker, and infects a large portion of the poker playing population. Such a narrative entails the victim of a bad beat relaying its details to another player, a group of players, a friend, or even just the ether of an entire poker room. This despite nobody, not even the victim’s best friend, wanting to hear the story. Bad beat stories spread negative energy around poker players, poker tables, and poker rooms – if poker players would stop telling them, the game would be more enjoyable. But this will never happen, and it is likely that even after poker dies, it will take millennia for the bad beat stories to decay away.
Badugi – A four-card lowball draw poker game in which the goal is to get four cards ace-through-four of four different suits. The game is normally played triple draw. Because the goal is four different suits, boards or Omaha hands of four different suits are sometimes referred to as 'badugis'. E.g. "The turn was the eight of diamonds, making the board a full badugi."
Balanced range – A range of hands that contains a correct ratio of value bets and bluffs. In theory, betting a balanced range leaves one’s opponent in a position of indifference, meaning that their EVs of calling and folding are identical. In practice, if correctly applied, playing from a balanced range leaves one’s opponent miserable, feeling that whatever they do, it’s probably wrong. The term has also expanded to cover real-life situations: “You’re wearing a fedora. Weren’t you wearing a baseball cap yesterday?” “Yes, I have a balanced hat range.”
Bankroll – An amount of money set aside for playing poker. Some players have such an amount truly set aside. Others merely collect discretionary funds until they have enough for a couple of buy-ins, and go down to the casino. Within the poker world, there is another, less important, term – 'liferoll'. That’s the amount (or ongoing stream) of money that pays for food, rent, and other things which are incidental to poker.
Bankroll management – The process of ensuring that one has sufficient funds to play poker at their current stakes. Without proper bankroll management, the variance in poker ensures that the player will go bust, unless their bankroll is supported by external income or savings. For clarity, vanishingly few poker players have what would be considered a statistically sound bankroll for the stakes that they play. Which is one of the reasons that so many pro poker players go broke.
Barrel – To continue to bet on a specific street, usually with the connotation that one is bluffing. Usage: “I’m going to fire two barrels on the flop and turn, but if they’re still with me by the river, I’m shutting down.” This thought is followed by the player firing a zero-equity bluff on the river, and being snap-called. The best laid plans of mice and men…
Beat into the pot – To call so quickly that your chips are in the pot before the bettor’s. Usage: “I announced ‘$200,’ and her chips beat me into the pot. FML.”
Behind – (a) Chips in a stack that are available to be bet. Usage: “How many chips do you have?” “I have $500 behind after that $100 bet.” (b) Chips that are available for a player, but haven’t been physically brought to the table. Usage: the player in seat #3 gets busted. They then hand $800 to the floor person for more chips. Before going to get the chips, the floor will say, “$800 behind seat #3.” The player can now play as if they have $800 in front of them. (c) To be losing a hand in progress but still have the chance to win, e.g. "I knew when the fourth heart came down that I was definitely behind, but any deuce or five on the river would give me the full house and the pot. Short story short, it didn't. Anyway, can you spare some money for a cab home?"
Bet – To voluntarily put money into the pot, forcing all other players to at least call that amount if they wish to continue in the hand. Betting is one of the five fundamental actions in a poker game (the others are call, check, fold, and raise).
Bet sizing – The study of how much to bet. Big-bet formats allow a player to bet any amount from the big blind up to the size of the pot (for pot-limit games) or the effective stack (for no-limit games). Solvers have shown that correct bet sizing is a complex problem.
Big-bet – Either pot-limit or no-limit poker – any version of the game where bet sizes are unlimited, or nearly so. This is in contrast with fixed limit.
Big Blind – (a) A specific number of chips posted by one player before cards are dealt. Although there are exceptions, the big blind is usually posted two seats to the left of the button, one seat to the left of the small blind. The size of the big blind is the key indicator of how big a particular game will play. And because the big blind size escalates during a tournament, players are acutely aware of how large it is. Starting with Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold’em book, first published in 2004, players began valuing their stack by the number of big blinds it contained, particularly in tournaments. Tournament players are also notorious for shortening big blinds to 'bigs', because of the wasted effort on that second syllable. (b) The player who is in the big blind position.
Big Blind Ante – An ante for the entire table, which is posted by the player in the big blind position. This development first appeared at the World Series of Poker in 2018. It is a more efficient and error-free way of collecting antes, rather than the dealer reminding players to post antes, determining who shorted the pot, etc. Big blind antes are now the norm in all tournaments, and the few cash games that have antes.
Big O – A split pot version of Omaha in which all players get five cards. The pot is split between the high hand and best 8-or-better lowball hand (if any). To truly be 'Big O', the game must be played pot-limit. Some people call 5-card Omaha 8-or-better 'Big O' when it’s played fixed limit. Such people are wrong.
Big Slick – The hold’em hand ace-king. This is the most polite term ever used for this hand, as it routinely sets players up for expensive failure. Supposedly in the old Texas gambling days, it was known as 'Walking back to Houston.' This is understandable.
Bink – To get whatever card you were trying to hit – often with a connotation of getting lucky. E.g. “I was behind all the way, but binked a two-outer on the river.”
Blank – A card that appears to have no effect on who is ahead in a poker pot. Suppose the flop is the . There’s betting, and then the turn card is the . It’s unlikely that this card helped any player involved, so it is called a 'blank'. Synonym: brick.
Blind – (a) (noun) Any bet that is posted before a player has seen their cards. Blinds indicate how big a game will play, and thus games are described by their blinds. For instance, '$1/3 NLH' means a no-limit hold’em cash game with a $1 small blind and a $3 big blind. (b) (adverb) Making a bet not required by the rules of the game, and before a player has seen their cards. For instance, the under-the-gun player might say, before receiving their cards, “I’m all-in blind.” This is just as nuts as it sounds, yet it happens with surprising frequency. Poker is not dead. See also dark.
Blind level – The current value of the blinds in a tournament. Tournament blinds increase on a regular time interval, such as 30, 60, or 90 minutes. For instance, a tournament may start out with 100 (small blind) and 200 (big blind). Then after 30 minutes, the blinds increase to 150 and 300. Another 30 minutes later, the blinds go up to 200 and 400.Usage: “We’re at level 14 – blinds are 2,000 and 4,000.”
Blind out – The process of removing chips from a missing player’s stack to pay their blinds during a tournament. If a player isn’t at their seat when they are in the blind positions, the dealer will take the necessary chips from their stack to pay their blind. This process continues until the player returns or 'blinds out' of the tournament. Note that in a cash game, a missing player is simply skipped over, and they must wait for the big blind to resume playing, or post a missed blind. Players in cash games are not blinded out.
Blocker – A card or cards that makes it harder (or impossible) for an opponent to hold a particular hand. For instance, in hold'em, if there are three spades on the board, a player holding the ace of spades knows that nobody can hold the nut flush, because they are looking at the card required to have the nuts. This player is said to have the 'nut-blocker'. A less restrictive blocker example would be holding ace-queen, which 'blocks' pocket aces and pocket queens. Modern poker players are enamored of blockers – they treat them as some sort of talisman that prevents their opponents from having a particularly feared strong hand. For this reason, a blocker spell appears in the Book of Poker Incantations (“Obstructore!”). It allows the player to make otherwise foolish bluffs and calls by eliminating (or at least mitigating) the danger of certain strong hands.
Block bet – A bet (usually on the river) made by an out-of-position player to (hopefully) prevent the in-position player from making a large bet that will put them in a tough spot. This is done if the bettor believes they have some showdown value, but can’t tolerate a large bet. For example, there is $100 in the pot. The out-of-position player fears that if they check, they could face a bet of $50 or more. So they bet $20, hoping that their opponent either calls or folds. If the opponent raises, they presume they are beaten, and fold.
Blue line – A graph indicating how much money was won (or lost) in hands that went to showdown. Simply put, it’s a measure of how often you have the best hand at showdown. The term arose from PokerTracker and other tracking software that track these statistics and displays them on graphs. Contrast with red line.
Bluff – To bet or raise as if you have a strong hand, when you don’t. Bluffing is integral to poker, and mirrors myriad real-life situations because poker and real life share the attribute of incomplete information. “$125,000 and that’s our final offer for the house.” Is it really the final offer, or are they bluffing? And that is why the poker term bluff has become integral to the English vocabulary.
Board – (a) The community cards that are currently on the table. Usage: “I was holding pocket kings, and somehow we got to the river without an ace on the board.” (b) A physical or digital device to track players waitlisted for cash games. In modern poker rooms, the board is displayed electronically on a monitor in the room. Such a board will also show the number of tables of each stake. (c) The person or team that manages the sign-up board.
Board texture – The nature of a board in a flop game. Are there many draws available? Is top pair likely to still be top pair throughout the hand? Which player has range advantage on this board? With the advent of solvers, board texture has become vitally important, to a degree that it never was in the pre-solver days.
Bomb Pot – A version of hold’em, Omaha, or any flop game in which there is no preflop betting. All players pay an ante, the dealer distributes cards, and then immediately puts out the flop. Action begins one to the left of the button. One particularly popular version of bomb pots is the loved and dreaded double board PLO bomb pot.
Bot – Short for 'robot'. A software app that plays online poker. Such apps exist and can beat many low-stakes online games. They can run non-stop, they never tire, and they never tilt. Even if a bot doesn’t beat the actual game for very much, they can make enough rakeback to be quite profitable. Most importantly, a team of cheaters can run dozens or hundreds of bots on a single site. Bots and RTA present existential threats to online poker.
Bottom pair – To hold a pair with the lowest card on the board. If your hold’em hand is five-four, and the flop is , then you have a pair of fours, and it is the bottom pair. While hold’em players are fond of saying, “It’s hard to make a pair,” bottom pair is nothing to get excited about.
Bounty – (a) A type of poker tournament in which part of the prize pool is allocated for bounties. That is, if you bust another player out of the tournament, you immediately receive some amount of cash. Recently, two different types of bounty tournaments have become popular: progressive bounties, and mystery bounties. (b) The prize awarded for eliminating a player from a poker tournament.
Box – The seat in which the dealer sits. E.g. “That’s two straight hands where the dealer has accidentally exposed a card. We need coffee to the box on table #6 please.”
Boxed card – A card that is incorrectly face-up in the deck. This can happen when the dealer is organizing the deck to shuffle after the prior hand. A player may point it out, or it may just appear as the dealer is distributing cards. Most poker room rules hold that a boxed card is simply removed from play as if it had never been there.
Break – (a) The act of sending all of the players from a single table at a multi-table tournament (MTT) to other tables. As players bust out of MTTs, random seats open at random tables. When enough seats have opened up, an entire table is broken and its players sent to the empty seats. This process is repeated until the final table. (b) A cash game table ending up with too few players to continue playing (as defined solely by the remaining players). With the right players, the table won’t break at heads-up. With the wrong players, a table can break at as many as six or seven players, because one player won’t play seven-handed, then one player won’t play at six-handed, and it cascades down to a table with just the dealer sitting there looking sad. Nothing is sadder than a perfectly good cash game breaking when it shouldn’t have. (c) A scheduled pause in a tournament. The tournament clock will usually show when the next break is taking place, and then counts down that break once it starts.
Broadway – An ace-high straight, ten-to-ace. Contrast with wheel.
Brick – (a) Synonym for blank. 'Brick' is sometimes preferred because it verbs so easily: “I got all the chips in with 15 outs, but the board bricked off and I was out.” Somehow, the board never bricks off when the hero is in front – in such cases, the board is said to run out clean. As if the hero staying in front was the neat and correct result. (b) To bust out of a tournament without cashing. Usage: “It’s been a great summer so far – I’ve bricked the first five events I’ve played.”
Brick and mortar – Any poker room that is a physical entity, as opposed to online. Brick and mortar is a regular phrase in English, but is used specifically as an antonym of online in the poker world.
Bubble – (a) (noun) The point in a tournament at which all remaining players cash. Suppose a tournament is going to pay 100 players. When 101 players remain, the tournament is on the bubble. This is the key inflection point in the tournament, since the next player to bust out will get nothing, but all players remaining after that person busts will get at least something. In large high-buy-in tournaments, the bubble becomes a living breathing creature, sucking all the air from the room. All the players, floor staff, and media people frantically follow the action, waiting for the magic hand when the losers and winners are separated from each other. (b) (verb) To bust a tournament just before making the money, e.g. "I bubbled the last three tournaments I played, can you explain ICM to me one more time?"
Buck – An old, colloquial name for what is now known as the button. As an interesting historical side note, this is the origin of President Harry Truman’s famous “The buck stops here” sign (Truman was an avid poker player). Truman’s message was that, as President, he was responsible for making the final decision, and that 'passing the buck' was not an option for him.
Bullet – A tournament entry. Because re-entries have become commonplace, vocabulary was needed to describe entering a tournament multiple times. Usage: “I fired four bullets at the Venetian $1,500 today, but busted six off the money. Just another lovely day at the office.”
Burn – (a) (verb) To remove the top card on the deck from play before dealing cards to players or board cards. This is a security measure designed to make marked cards less effective. However, the procedure is deeply ingrained in the poker culture. In fact, many players believe that online poker is not “real” poker because online poker sites don’t burn a card before putting the flop out. Poker is not dead. (b) (noun) Any card that was burned.
Bust – (a) To run out of chips in a tournament (typically 'bust out'). If the tournament permits re-entries, a player hasn’t really busted out unless they decide they don’t want to, or can’t, put up another buy-in. Bust-out stories are akin to bad beat stories, in that both involve the protagonist losing the pot, everybody tells them, but nobody wants to hear them. They are a kind of speak-only narrative. (b) To run out of money in your bankroll. This is far worse than busting from a tournament, in that you are no longer in action. For a poker pro, this is career-ending, or at least career suspending. Such a situation is almost always caused by poor bankroll management and/or life leaks. (c) To miss a draw. Usage: “I had a combo draw – nine flush outs, and three more gutshots. But the river was a brick and I busted it all.”
Button – (a) A disc or other marker showing what player is the dealer. Unless this is a home game or rare player-dealt casino game, that player is not the actual dealer, but acts last on all betting streets except the first. In almost all poker rooms, the button says 'Dealer' on it, only adding to new players’ confusion. (b) Any acrylic disc that provides information about the state of the game and players. E.g. 'Missed blind button', 'All-in button'.
Buy-in – (a) (noun) An amount of money used to enter a tournament or cash game. A buy-in is like a lottery ticket, in that it confers upon the holder a level of optimism and promise far beyond its actual value. With one buy-in, anything is possible; two buy-ins is excess. (b) (verb) the act of entering the tournament or cash game. E.g. “I had the evening off, so I bought into the 7:00pm $300 mystery bounty event.”
Buy the button – (a) In a cash game, a player who has missed the big blind can post both the big blind and small blind amounts in the small blind position. The small blind amount will be dead in the pot. By doing this, the player will be allowed to play the button on the next hand, and not miss an entire orbit. (b) To raise in late position, with the intent of forcing out all the players through the button. If this play is successful, the raiser will then have last action throughout the remainder of the hand, giving them a powerful strategic advantage.

C

Cage – The location of the cashier. You go to the cage to purchase chips for a cash game (or sometimes they’re brought to the table by a chip runner). When you’re done playing the cash game, you take any chips you have to the cage, and exchange them for cash. The cage is often where you go to buy into a tournament, and to get your pay-out if you cash.
Call – To match the current bet. This is the first instinct of most poker players – to invest the minimum required to continue in the hand. When a new player asks, “How much do I have to put in?”, they are usually told, “Nothing – you can fold.” This only upsets and insults such players. “No, I mean, how much do I have to put in to keep playing?” Poker is not dead. Also, Call off, usually meaning to call a bet all-in. Usage: “I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I had top pair, and only four big blinds left, so I called it off.”
Call-in – (a) (verb) The act of phoning a poker room to get your name on a waitlist for one or more cash game tables. (b) (noun) A player who has called in, but isn’t physically in the poker room. Usage: a player leaves table #5. The dealer says to the floor, “Do we have a board for $3/5?” “Yeah, It’s all call-ins, but you should get somebody soon.” This is optimistic thinking, because a player in the poker room is worth five on the call-in list.
Calling clock – Request the floor to give a one-minute countdown to a player who has been tanking for too long (by some arbitrary ill-defined standard). If the player doesn’t act before the clock runs out, their hand is declared dead (effectively folded). Clock calling is, inexcusably, one of the most fraught and troublesome aspects of big-bet poker because a player at the table has to ask for the clock to be called, rather than the dealer doing it. Thus the players are responsible for the management and flow of the game, which is not their job. In many circles, it’s considered poor form or rude to call the clock, and there’s often selective “enforcement,” depending on how gently and graciously the table as a whole wants to treat a particular player. One of the few ways in which online poker is markedly superior to live poker is that all online poker sites have a built-in clock on each player’s actions. If that clock runs down, the player’s hand is automatically folded. No delay, no favorites, no hassles.
Calling Demon – An evil imp that sits on a poker player’s shoulder, telling them that they should call. The siren whispers come in various forms: "MDF," "Exploitable," and one of the most deadly – “Story doesn’t make sense.” Fortunately, quietly invoking its name ("stupid calling demon…") deprives it of much of its power, and almost totally mutes its voice. Proof of this creature was first given by Brokos and Welch. While the Vocatus daemonium is a specter, and not a spell, it has been added to the Book of Poker Incantations, because of its power and influence in the poker world.
Calling Station – A player who calls when they should fold, and calls when they should raise. Most new, and many veteran poker players fit this description. There is something about “calling” that seems natural and a nice compromise between the disappointment of folding, and the fear of raising.
Cap – (a) A limit on the number of chips that may be purchased when buying (or rebuying) into a cash game. Usage: “This $2/3 game has a $400 cap.” It’s fine if your stack goes above $400 because you’ve won chips. However, if your stack goes below $400 and you wish to rebuy, you can only top-up to $400 or less. See also match the stack. (b) A limit on how much any player in a hand can contribute to a pot. Such a cap is set to prevent massive all-in pots that can easily bust players, most notably in bomb pots. (c) In fixed limit games, the maximum number of raises that can be put in on any street. Traditionally, this is either three or four raises. A player saying, “Cap it,” means that person is putting in the last allowable raise, and everybody else has the choice of either calling or folding.
Capped Range – A situation in which there is a theoretical limit on how strong a particular player’s range is. While there are no guarantees, a player’s range being capped allows their opponent to bluff them with relative ease. Consider the following simple example from a heads-up hold’em hand: on the flop, the action goes check-check. On the turn, the action goes check-check again. On the river, a card which appears to be a brick, the first player checks. After this sequence of actions, it’s almost impossible for the first player to have a strong hand – their range is capped. Now the second player can bluff with impunity.
Cards – Playing cards. Also known in some judgmental circles as The Devil’s playthings or The handmaidens of chance. Prudes.
Cards speak – A poker protocol which says that once a poker hand has been tabled at showdown, the cards speak, meaning that if the hand is the best one, the pot will be awarded to whomever has the hand – the player needn’t even be aware that they have the winner. Both the dealer and other players at the table (per TDA Rule #2) have an obligation to ensure that the best hand tabled is awarded the pot. The opposite of cards speak is declare, which is, fortunately, long gone from public poker.
Carnival game – Any parallel game embedded into a poker game, to create action, make nits uncomfortable, or generally produce a more gambly environment. Examples include the seven-deuce game, and the stand-up game. Bomb pots are not exactly carnival games, in that they are a perfectly valid poker variant, but are usually inserted into the regular game flow just for lulz. Carnival games are not built into the structure of any casino poker game, and are played solely by unanimous agreement of all players at the table. This allows nits and party poopers to veto the entire game, to the degree they’re willing to tolerate rampant reprobation by their table-mates.
Case – (a) The last card of a rank or suit in the deck, always used as part of a bad beat story. E.g. “I had a set of nines, he had a set of fives. Somehow he found the case five on the river to make quads.” (b) The last money available to a poker player. If somebody uses case money to play poker, they’re definitely not practicing good bankroll management.
Cash – (a) (verb) To win money at a poker tournament. Most poker tournaments are structured as percentage payouts, where the prize money is divided among 10-20% of the field, with the ultimate winner receiving the largest share. All players who make it to that final 10-20% receive some amount of money, and cash the tournament. (b) (noun) Shorthand for a cash game, e.g. "I got here too late to register for the tournament, so I figured I might as well go play some cash."
Cash game – Any poker game in which the chips represent actual currency (e.g. $, £, ₿). A player may enter or leave a cash game at any time. If they bust, they can rebuy and continue playing. When they leave the game, any chips they have may be redeemed for equivalent currency. The stakes of a cash game don’t change. That is, if the big blind is $3, then it stays $3 for as long as the game runs. For contrast, see tournament. Ring game is a synonym.
Cash out – To leave a cash game with whatever chips you have, go to the cage, and exchange them for real currency. Interestingly, cashing out is now more prevalent than cashing in, which has the same meaning. But the phrase cashing in has persisted. Usage: “Ol’ Bob cashed in his chips last week.” If poker ever dies, people can say that poker cashed in its chips.
Chase – (a) To try to make a poker hand, with the connotation that the chaser is very far behind and unlikely to catch up. Usage: “She kept chasing the flush, despite the bad price she was getting.” (b) To try, unwisely, to recoup losses, usually by gambling wildly. Usage: “He got crushed at the $1/3 stakes, so he jumped up to $2/5 to chase his losses.” See also, bankroll management.
Check – (a) A poker action in which the player chooses not to bet (indicated by saying Check, or tapping the table). However, the player retains the right to call, or even raise if there is a bet behind them, so it is not equivalent to folding. (b) A casino or poker chip (also cheque). This is more of a pit game phrase, but some older poker dealers will call out for "player’s cheques!” when somebody wants to re-buy. This usage is rapidly disappearing, which will end the opportunity for the table wag to say, “Traveler’s check!” when a chip accidentally rolls across the table. Then again, nobody knows what a traveler’s check is anymore, so the line is already useless.
Check back – To check, but specifically when you are the last person to act on a given street. Thus by checking back, you cause the next card to be dealt, or, if you’re on the river, the showdown to take place. You will hear some people say “check back” to mean simply check. Do not trust such people.
Check-raise – To check on a certain street, and then raise after a bet on that same street. This is a something of a sneak attack, since the action of checking usually indicates weakness. Years ago, some games and communities considered check-raising unethical or bad form. To this day, some poker rooms have signage on the wall indicating that check-raising is permitted, so everybody knows it might happen.
Chip – A clay or acrylic disc or (rarely) plaque representing a specific amount of cash value (in a cash game) or an arbitrary denomination of units in a poker tournament. For no possibly good reason, tournament chips are denominated with piles of extra zeros, so the smallest denomination tournament chip will usually be 25 or 100. By the time a large field tournament ends, and the remaining players have colored up, chips with 100k or even 1M denominations are in play. Nobody knows how many blinds anybody has (quick - what’s 1,780,000 divided by 40,000?), and lay people can be forgiven for believing that the players are competing for the GDP of a small Asian country. In some contexts (particularly in the pit) chips are referred to as checks or cheques. Usage: a player sits down at a blackjack table and bets a chip that is a particularly high denomination for that table. The dealer will call out, “Checks play!”
Chip dumping – A collusion (cheating) technique in which one player intentionally loses a pot to a confederate. Two unrelated motivations for chip dumping: To balance stacks during a tournament (ICM models show that the highest total equity in a tournament summed across two stacks is if the stacks are roughly equal); to illicitly transfer chips from one player to another on an online poker site. The reasons for this can range from benign to pure money laundering.
Chip leader – Whoever currently has the most chips in a tournament.
Chip race – A tournament procedure designed to make coloring up as fair as possible. TDA Rule #24 provides the details of the chip race procedure.
Chip runner – A poker room employee who brings chips to the table.
Chop – (a) A situation in which two players split a pot because they have the same strength hand. For instance, consider a hold’em board of of four different suits. Since no flush is possible, any player holding a ten in their hand has a Broadway straight, which is the nuts. If two or more players have a ten, they will chop the pot equally. (b) A deal to distribute the prize money for the last few places of a tournament according to ICM or another algorithm. Because tournament payouts often rise steeply, and the variance is high, it is often in all the remaining players’ interest to distribute the remaining money in a more balanced way. Usage: “How about we pull out $5k for the ultimate winner, and chop the rest by ICM?” What follows is interminable negotiations, because each player involved asserts that they are better than all the others, and thus deserves a greater-than-ICM share. (c) Chop blinds is an agreement made between the small blind and big blind when the preflop action folds to the small blind. When the blinds chop, the hand is over. This usually means that no rake is paid, and thus both players may save Sklansky$.
Clean – For a board to run out in a way that keeps the hero in front. Usage: “We went all-in, we had top set, and got a clean run-out.” Contrast with brick, when the hero needs to get there, but doesn’t.
Click – (a) To raise the minimum legal number of chips. This usage derives from online poker clients, which offer a Raise button, even for big-bet games. If you click that button, you will automatically raise the minimum, which is rarely the correct strategic play. (b) 'Clicking buttons' means to play with no particular plan or strategy – as if the person is playing online, and almost randomly deciding which action button to click. Usage: “Why did he use a size like that?” “Don’t ask me – I think he was just clicking buttons.”
Clean out – An out which will actually give a player the best hand. In theory, any out should do that. However, an out may be dirty. For instance, if you are drawing a flush, a card which makes your flush, but pairs the board, could give another player a full house. Conversely, a flush-making card that doesn’t pair the board is a clean out.
Client – (a) An application (app) that a player downloads to play online poker. This is distinguished from the server, which is the computers on which the online poker site runs its software. (b) A player at a poker table who is giving their money to the good players (pros and other winning players). If the winning players forget the service-provider/client relationship they have with the bad players, the bad players leave, and the winning players no longer win. It is astonishing to see how ignorant many “pro” players are of this vital relationship.
Cold call – To call a bet-raise sequence before you have acted on this street. This is rarely good strategy, and frequent cold-calling of raises is a strong indicator of a good game.
Cold deck – A pre-arranged deck of cards which is secretly introduced to the game by a cheater in order to deal one or more players a cooler. It is called a cold deck because, fresh from its hiding place, it hasn’t been warmed by being in the dealer’s hand.
Collusion – A method of cheating, in which two or more confederates share information about their hole cards with each other. In live poker, this requires a signaling protocol. In online poker, it’s as trivial as sitting on the phone or in the same room with each other.
Color up – To exchange chips for fewer chips of a higher denomination. In a cash game, this is as simple as giving the floor a rack of $5 chips and asking them to bring you a stack of $25 chips, or five $100 chips. In a tournament, the procedure can be more complex, because the floor staff need to remove all of the lower denomination chips from play. To make this as fair as possible, coloring up is done during a break, and the extra lower denomination chips are raced off.
Community cards – The cards shared by all the players in flop games (hold’em, Omaha, etc). The collection of community cards is called the board.
Condensed range – A range that has many medium hands, with few nutted hands and few weak hands. Contrast with polarized and linear ranges.
Connector – A hold’em hand in which the two cards are one rank apart. Suited connectors are nearly unbeatable, worthy of cold-calling raises, and generally throwing caution to the winds (according to some).
Continuation bet (c-bet) – A bet made by the last aggressor on the previous street. The most common usage is that a player raises preflop, and is called by a single out-of-position opponent. After the flop comes down, the preflop caller checks, and the preflop raiser makes a bet. This bet is called a continuation bet or c-bet, because it continues the aggression from the previous street.
Cooler – (a) A pot in which two extremely strong hands run into each other, usually for piles of chips. The classic cooler is pocket aces and pocket kings getting all-in preflop. Originally, cooler was another name for a cold deck (a phrase used in The Sting). It’s a cheating technique in which a pre-arranged deck of cards is snuck into play, causing the victim to make an extremely strong hand. But of course, the con-man will hold a slightly better hand, and get all the money. (b) A spell in the Book of Poker Incantations. Usually muttered under the breath (“Frigus tesseras”), it absolves the losing player in a pot of any responsibility for that loss, no matter how many chips were involved. “It was just a cooler – I was never getting away from it.”
Counterfeit – To have a hand lose value because a board card created a hand that made the current hand moot. Consider the hold’em hand , and a flop of ace-ten-six. The ace-six hand now has two pair, and is beating strong hands such as ace-king. But if the turn is another ten, then the ace-six hand is counterfeited, as the best hand it can make is now aces and tens with a six kicker. But , which makes aces and tens with a king kicker, is the better hand. Counterfeiting also plays an important role in lowball flop games, because a wheel card can change the nut low, and counterfeit formerly nut hands.
Cover – The state of one chip stack being greater than another. This is important in table stakes, because the shorter of the two stacks is the effective stack, and that’s the most that can change hands between two players. For example, suppose Dan and David get all-in against each other. The dealer runs out the board, and Dan wins the pot. The dealer looks at both stacks and sees that Dan has about $500, whereas David has about $300. The dealer says, “Dan covers,” and slides all of David’s chips over to Dan. Conversely, if David wins the pot, and the dealer can see that Dan covers, then he will count down David’s stack, and tell Dan, “He’s got $295,” and then Dan will ship $295 over to David.
Crack – To beat a strong hand. Usage: “Ya, I flopped a set of eights and cracked his aces.” Crack and similar terms play an important role in the telling of bad beat stories.
Cripple the deck – To have a hand so strong that there is little chance that another player holds a hand with any strength. “I mean, it was great to flop quads, but that crippled the deck, and everybody folded when I just sneezed on the pot.”
Crying call – Calling a bet, usually on the last betting round, where you are almost sure you’re losing, but the pot odds (or your gut) force you to call. Usage: “I was pretty sure she had a flush, but I was getting 4:1 odds, and I thought there was some chance she was bluffing with the ace blocker, so I made a crying call. Obviously, she had the flush.”
Cut – A shuffling technique where the deck is split in half, with the original bottom half placed on top. See also wash, riffle, and strip. There is a cheating technique called a false cut, in which the mechanic appears to cut the deck, but leaves it in its original sequence. False cuts appear in at least one W.C. Fields movie.
Cutoff – The position at a poker table one to the right of the button. The position one to the right of the cutoff is the hijack.

D

Dark – To make a bet or raise without seeing cards which you have a right to see before taking your action. For instance, after all the preflop betting, but before the dealer puts out the flop, the first player to act may say, “I’m betting $20 dark.” Normally, that player would wait to see the flop before acting. The reasons why a player would bet dark are beyond the scope of this document, but suffice to say that poker is not dead.
Dead card – A card that has been exposed or is otherwise known to be unavailable in the hand. Usage: “Normally Jeremy would have nine outs – all the spades. However, the four of spades was accidentally exposed preflop, so it’s dead, and he has only eight outs.”
Dead hand – A poker hand which can no longer claim the pot. For instance, in a hold’em game, the dealer pauses the action and calls the floor over. “The player in seat #6 has three cards, but didn’t tell me, and then raised.” Floor person says, “Okay. His hand is dead, but the money stays in the pot.”
Dead money – (a) Money in a pot that was contributed by players who are no longer in the pot. Because those players can no longer win the pot, the equity in that money is shared by the remaining players. (b) A deprecating description of a player, or group of players. The implication is that the player has no chance to win, and thus any money that they wager in a poker game or tournament is dead, and will simply be shared by the other players. This phrase lost some credibility after the WSOP commentators kept referring to Chris Moneymaker as dead money during the 2003 WSOP Main Event.
Deal – (a) To distribute playing cards to the players at a poker table. (b) An agreement made at the end of a tournament to divide some or all of the remaining prize money differently than the original tournament pay-out schedule specifies. Such deals often benefit all participants, because of the short stacks and inherent variance present in the late stages of a tournament. This means that the players are effectively flipping for enormous sums of money, far greater than any sane bankroll management would dictate. Thus it’s wise for all of them to lock up their equity share of the prize money, rather than gamble for a bigger win. That said, deals are often difficult to consummate, because 90% of poker players are sure that they’re better than 90% of poker players, and thus everybody wants more than their ICM share.
Deal in – To include a player in the next hand being dealt. Usage: “Deal me in, please – I’ve got $500 behind.” Antonym: Deal out. To skip a particular player at the table when dealing. Usage: “Jackie, deal me out please – I’m going to go stretch my legs.”
Dealer – (a) The person who deals the cards at a poker table. (b) The label on the button. This is left over from the days when even casino poker games were player-dealt, and the button indicated who was physically pitching the cards. (c) (In poker mythology) An omniscient deity, who controls the outcome of the hand. Such demi-gods can decide who will make their draws, and who will fade others’ draws. They can even manifest sets for the favored. If you play enough poker, you will see players who sit out a particular dealer’s down because they believe that dealer is unlucky for them. Poker is not dead.
Deck – (a) The collection of 52 playing cards. (b) A magical device from which limitless entertainment, excitement, pain, and joy emanate.
Deuce-to-seven (2-7) – A type of lowball draw game in which the object is to make the “worst” poker hand. In this version of draw poker, the best possible hand is 7-5-4-3-2 because aces count high, and straights and flushes count against your hand. The game may be played triple-draw with fixed limit betting, or with a single draw and no-limit betting. No-limit deuce-to-seven is considered one of the purest gambling games, and it was a favorite of Doyle Brunson.
Defend – To call a raise when one already has chips invested in the pot, usually when they are in the blinds. Because the blinds have the worst position during the hand, over-defending them is akin to a military general doggedly defending the bottom of a hill. However, this analogy doesn’t resonate with poker players, who get their egos and masculinity all tied up with this assault on their blinds. Thus they are happy to fervently throw good money after bad, defending a tiny investment with a marginal hand in a weak table position. Poker continues to not be dead.
Dirty stack – A stack of chips which contains a chip of the “wrong” color. So a stack of $5 chips with a $1 chip in the middle is dirty. Normally the owner of the stack doesn’t notice it, and only finds out when somebody else at the table says, “Hey – your front stack is dirty.” “Thanks – you just cost me $4.” Some players are in the habit of not sorting the denominations of their chips, and thus have messy stacks of multiple denominations. In big-bet games, players have a right to a reasonable estimate of each opponent’s chips, thus keeping stacks that dirty is poor manners and disruptive at least, and an angle at worst.
Dog – Short for underdog.
Dominated hand – A hand, usually in hold’em, that has one of its cards duplicated by a better hand. For instance, if Rex holds queen-jack and April holds ace-king, Rex can make a pair of queens or jacks to take the lead in the hand. Conversely, if Rex has ace-jack when Carla has ace-king, then making a pair of aces does Rex no good, since April would have the superior kicker. A dominated hand has much worse equity than a non-dominated hand. The phrase is also used for match-ups such as ace-ten versus pocket jacks, since making a pair of tens won’t do the ace-ten much good.
Donk bet – Short for Donkey bet. A bet which is made out of flow. Particularly in no-limit hold’em, there is a both theoretical and practical choreography that has an out-of-position player who called a bet on one street then check to the in-position aggressor on the next street. In the early days of no-limit hold’em, a player who didn’t follow that choreography, and bet into the aggressor from the previous street, was a bad player – a donkey. Ironically, solvers have shown that there are times when it’s absolutely correct for the out-of-position player to lead on a card that gives them range advantage. This can be particularly profitable since that player has the camouflage of making a correct play that has a pejorative label.
Double board – A form of split pot poker in which two complete boards are dealt, and the pot is split between the winner of each individual board. Any flop game can be dealt double board. Most poker players understand double board games even less than they do the traditional single-board versions. But the second board gives twice as many hands some hope of capturing at least a piece of the pot. So more players continue further in the hand, and the pots get enormous.
Down – The period of time during which a dealer is at the table. At the end of their down, they are pushed by another dealer. Usage: “Drew is dealing one more down, then he’s headed home.”
Down card – A card dealt face down, such that only its recipient can see what it is. This is in contrast with an up card, which is visible to all the players at the table. In traditional flop games, only the community cards are up cards, but there’s nothing preventing a variant in which one or more of a player’s hole cards are dealt face-up. Such a variant would be interesting, at least in that it would revive the stud poker skill of remembering folded cards.
Downswing – An inevitable period in a poker player’s career when variance goes against them, and they have a losing month, or six months, or year. The nature of poker is such that even the best winning players have soul-crushing downswings, and the measure of a poker pro or serious amateur is how they manage and survive those periods. Oddly, one rarely hears about a player being on an upswing. Of course, such periods are simply the other side of the variance curve, but poker players, being human, tend to think of those times as normal, expected, and only fair. It is when the pendulum swings the other way that they rail against the universe.
Double – (a) Double up. A transitive verb meaning to double another player’s stack by losing an all-in pot to them. Usage: “He had queens, I had jacks, all the chips went in, and I doubled him up.” (b) Double through. A reflexible verb meaning to double your own stack by winning an all-in pot from another player. Usage: “I had queens, he had jacks, all the chips went in, and I doubled through him." The exact definition of double can be a bit fuzzy, depending on the effective stacks. If you have 80,000 chips, get all-in with an opponent who has 75,000 chips, and win the pot, you haven’t doubled your stack. However, nobody but a nit would look askance if you said you doubled through them.
Draw – (a) Any situation in poker where subsequent card(s) could give a player an extremely strong hand, but currently has little or no showdown value. Contrast with a value hand. (b) A form of poker in which each player receives a certain number of cards (usually five), and attempts to make the best hand via one or more draws. At each draw, the player discards zero or more of their cards, and is given replacement cards. Five-card draw poker first appeared shortly prior to the First American Civil War, and quickly became the most popular version of the game. It is the game you see in all the cowboy movies, and, importantly, The Sting.
Drawing dead – (a) To be drawing, but have no outs. If you are drawing to a straight when your opponent has already made a flush, you are drawing dead. Unfortunately, recent poker vernacular has created an oxymoronic bastardization, drawing dead to… when the player isn’t actually drawing dead. For instance, “He was up against the nut flush, but had a gutshot to the straight flush, so he was drawing dead to the seven of clubs.” This semantic train wreck is so unnecessary, because the word “slim” exists in the English language.(b) Any IRL situation where the person has no chance. E.g. “He’s going to ask the chief legal officer out on a date.” “Drawing dead.” “I know, right?”
Dry side pot – A side pot with no chips in it. This happens if a player gets all-in against two or more other players who have chips behind. At this point, the main pot is frozen, and all further bets go into the side pot. This side pot starts empty, or “dry.” A dry side pot has significant strategic implications, and it creates a bizarre dynamic that influences the rest of the hand.
Dynamic board – A board on which the best hand is likely to change with subsequent cards. For instance, if the flop is , any heart makes a flush possible, and any ace, deuce, six, or seven makes a four-liner to a straight. Contrast with static board.

E

Edge – The anticipation of being +EV in a particular poker cash game, tournament, or any wager. Usage: “I wanted to play the $5K PLO event, but I couldn’t honestly say I had an edge, so I passed.”

Effective stack – The shortest stack of chips involved in a particular pot. For instance, if Al has 5,000 chips, Brenda has 4,000 chips, and Charlie has 3,000 chips, the effective stack among the three of them is 3,000 chips. That’s because, according to table stakes rules, Charlie can only win 3,000 chips from each of Al and Brenda, and can lose no more than 3,000 chips.
Empty the clip – To fire a last-street bluff, having bet the previous streets. The phrase is adjacent to the verb barrel, continuing with the theme of violence in poker discussions. Usage: “I flopped the flush draw, so I c-bet the flop, and he called. I picked up a gutshot on the turn, and fired a second barrel. If he called again, I was gonna empty the clip on the river, but he folded, fortunately.
Entry – A buy-in to a tournament. This is distinct from an entrant (aka runner) because with re-entry tournaments, a single player may re-enter one or more times.
Equilibrium – Also known as Nash equilibrium. Named after mathematician John Nash, a Nash equilibrium is a state in a game in which any player unilaterally changing their strategy makes them exploitable by the other player(s). Equilibria are at the heart of GTO play.
Equity – The “rightful” percentage of the pot that a hand has. One way of viewing it is that at any given point in a hand, if you ran out all possible combinations of the remaining board cards, a given hand would win a percentage of time equal to its equity. Note that it is highly unlikely that any hand will win at exactly the frequency represented by its equity. That’s because, unless the players are all-in, there is betting between the point at which the equity is measured, and the showdown (if any). This difference is referred to as equity realization. Despite this, many poker players believe that they have a right to win as frequently as their equity dictates, and then some, always. Poker is not dead.
Equity calculator – A software application that finds the relative equities of two or more poker hands against each other. Simple calculators can compute the equities only of specific hands, while more sophisticated ones can measure the equity of a hand against a range, or a range against a range, using Monte Carlo simulation.
Equity protection – A bet designed to protect the bettor’s chances of winning the pot by forcing their opponent to choose between folding a lot of equity and calling with a likely inferior hand.
Equity realization – The ability of a poker hand to win a percentage of the pots equal to its raw all-in equity. Because poker has betting streets, a player must work to realize (or exceed) the equity of their hand. Contrast this with Roulette, where a player who bets on red will win exactly 48.648% of the time in the long run – they need not (and cannot) do anything to alter that outcome. Which is why Roulette is stupid. The most obvious example of equity realization differences is that a player who is in-position will realize more than their fair share of the equity, and the out-of-position player will realize less.
Equity when called (EWC) – A qualitative measure of the change in equity that a player’s hand experiences when the player bets, and is called. When somebody calls a bet, their range of hands immediately becomes stronger, because they will fold their weakest hands. If the caller’s hand strength, and thus equity, goes up, then the bettor’s equity must, by definition, go down. EWC reflects how much equity a hand retains after betting and being called.
Exploitive play – Or, exploitative play. A specific play, or overall poker strategy, designed to exploit mistakes that one’s opponents are making. This is in contrast to an equilibrium strategy, in which the player is attempting to play in such a way that they themselves can’t be exploited. In the beginning, before solvers, there was only exploitive play, because the technology didn’t exist to find Nash equilibria for poker. Now that such equilibria exist, there is a constant tension between GTO and exploitive play; while playing GTO minimizes the ability of other players to exploit its practitioner, it doesn’t extract the most profit that can be obtained from imperfect humans. Poker is hard.
EV (Expected Value) – The theoretical amount of money or chips that you’ll receive from a wager. For instance, if you bet $100 on red on a double-zero Roulette wheel, the expected value of that bet is $97.297. You will actually receive either $200 or $0, but averaged over an infinite number of spins of the wheel, you will get back $97.30 for each $100 you wager. Because Roulette is stupid. In a poker context, suppose you get all-in against another player for $500 each, and there is $200 dead money in the pot. So there is a total of $1,200 in the pot. If you have 45% equity in the hand, and your opponent has 55% equity, then your EV is $540 (45% x $1200). You will get back either $1200, or $0, but again, over an infinite number of run-outs of this same situation, you will average getting $540 back. A wager that expects to win money is called plus-EV (or +EV).

F

Face – The side of a playing card that displays its rank and suit. The other side is the back of the card.
Face-up – (a) A card or cards that are lying on the poker table, with their faces exposed. This state is crucial at showdown, because only tabled cards can win a pot. (b) To play in a way that is totally transparent, almost as if your cards were face-up. Usage: “One of the big advantages of 3-betting is that many people play face-up post-flop after a 3-bet.”
Fade – (a) In gambling, to take the opposite side of a bet, effectively establishing the wager. For example, a San Francisco 49ers fan might say to a friend, “I wanna bet $1,000 on the 49ers to win this game, at even money.” The friend says, “I’ll fade that,” meaning that they agree to bet on the other team for $1,000. (b) Poker players use the term to mean to avoid specific cards. E.g. “My hand is good right now, but I have to fade all the hearts.” (c) Proximate to (b) above, avoid anything, in any context. E.g. “Yeah, I’d love to go hiking tomorrow, but we have to fade rain.” This is actually a terrible example, because it involves poker players getting outdoor exercise, and thus lacks credibility.
Family pot – A pot in which all the players at the table have put chips in to see the flop. That this phrase exists, and gets frequent usage, is prima facie proof that poker is not dead.
Fast fold – A form of online poker (e.g. PokerStars Zoom) in which a player is moved from their current table to a new one immediately upon folding at the current table. This allows people to play over 100 hands per hour. If online poker is a drug, then fast fold poker is crack. There are people who multi-table fast-fold poker. Some may think all of these people are, or should be, on Ritalin.
Fast play – To begin betting or raising immediately with a strong hand. This is mostly an antonym of slow-play, and is used much less. It is used much less because poker players love to be trappy, and wait until the last minute to decloak their monster hands.
Felt – (a) The playing surface of a poker table. Many commercial and professional tables use materials other than actual felt. One popular one is a polyester material called speedcloth. Normally patterned with card suits, it lives up to its name because cards slide across it effortlessly. Usage: “We need to change the felt on table #1.” Note that this is the vocabulary that’s used, even if the felt is speedcloth or another material. In the UK, the surface is called baize. Again, irrespective of the actual material in use. (b) A general reference to getting all-in, since if you reach the felt, there are no chips between you and it. Usage: “She flopped middle set, and I flopped TPTK with the nut flush draw. We got to the felt pretty quickly.” (c) A verb allegedly coined by Phil Laak, meaning to reduce someone - or be reduced - to having no chips. Usage: "That's twice I've been felted in the last half an hour. Can anyone tell me the rules, again?"
Festival – A series of poker tournaments clustered around a few days (or a few weeks) at the same venue. The World Series of Poker is, by far, the most famous poker tournament festival. Note that the word series is more common in the United States, but festival (more common in Europe) connotes greater fun and celebration, and thus is strictly preferable to series. For semantic accuracy, slog would be better than both.
Field – The collection of players in a poker tournament. “Levels four and five have big blind increases and really thin the field.” Also, in betting parlance, “everybody or everything else” against a specified favorite. Usage: “Seven players left at the final table? I’ll take Koon and Chidwick against the field for even money.”
Final table – The last table of a multi-table tournament. This is where all the serious money is in percentage payout tournaments. And even then, the difference between first and ninth places is often a factor of 10x or more. Final tables are so important that they have become a verb as well. “Ya, he final tabled the Wynn $1600 last week, so he’s sitting pretty for buy-ins for a while.”
Find – To take a poker action, sometimes with the connotation that the search was unsuccessful. Usage: “He had the straight. I knew he had the straight. But I still couldn’t find the fold.” This metaphor of poker players searching, as in the weeds, for the correct action is strikingly apt.
Fish – (a) A person who plays poker badly. (b) Anybody, at any time, who wins a poker pot from you. This is particularly true if they put a bad beat on you.
Fixed limit – A poker betting format in which the size of all bets and raises is fixed. For instance, in a $10/20 fixed limit hold’em game, the first two betting streets have $10 bets and raises, no more and no less. The second two betting streets have $20 bets and raises. While no-limit hold’em took the world by storm during the Moneymaker boom days, fixed limit poker continues to be popular in a large minority of the poker community. Most mixed games are played fixed limit.
Flat call – To call, with the connotation that raising would be a reasonable alternative.
Flick in – To call a bet. Usage: “I just flicked in the call.” This term is relatively new at the time of writing (2024). Like many phrases, it furthers the narrative that calling is easy, simple, painless, and requires nothing more than the flick of the finger. Poker is not dead.
Flip – (a) Derived from Coin flip. An even money bet, in which both sides have an equal opportunity to win. (b) Any situation where two players get all-in with similar equities. (c) Any bet in which the bettor wants to believe that they have a relatively equal chance of winning. “My ace-king was flipping against her pocket nines.” In point of fact, ace-king is a 44:56 underdog to pocket nines, all-in preflop. Poker is not dead. (d) Any wager where the bettors agree to bet on a random outcome, just for the lulz. This can take the form of a poker hand where everyone's chips are intentionally commited before any cards are dealt. Usage: “Before we start the serious poker, let’s all do a $100 Omaha flip.” That is, each player puts in a $100 ante and is dealt four cards. The dealer then runs out a regular five-card board, with no betting. There is a showdown, usually involving much drama and cards being sweated. The best Omaha hand wins the entire pot. As an aside, such wagers are frequently called PLO flips. Why this is nonsensical is left as an exercise for the reader.
Flip-and-go – A multi-table tournament in which one or more flips are done at initial tables. Once the field is reduced sufficiently (sometimes actually into the money), the actual poker starts.
Float – To call a bet with little or no equity - often on the flop - intending to “take away” the pot with a bet (usually a bluff) on a later street. Usage: “I floated his c-bet on the flop with queen-high. He checked the turn, I bet, and he folded.”
Floor – Short for floorperson. A member of the poker room staff who is responsible for at-table decisions. If a dealer needs such a decision rendered, they often raise their hand and say, “Floor!”
Flop – The first three community cards dealt out in a hold’em or Omaha game. The second street of betting in such a game.
Flush – (a) Five cards of the same suit. (b) To have a nice healthy bankroll. Usage: “I’m really flush right now, so will be firing a lot of WSOP bullets.”
FML – Acronym for Fairly Miserable Luck.
Fold – (a) To relinquish your cards and forfeit all right to any portion of the pot. (b) To many poker players, the saddest, most depressing part of playing poker. It is popular to say, “Folding is boring.” And thus, poker is not dead.
Fold equity – The extra equity in a pot that a bettor has by causing their opponent to fold. Fold equity isn’t a number, but a general concept that the bettor may have more than their “fair” share of the pot because they may be able to make their opponent fold.
For-profit player – A poker player who expects to win more than they lose at poker. That is, they believe that they are +EV when they play. This term is more accurate than the common rec and reg terms.
Foul – (a) Any deck of cards that is determined not to have the correct 52 cards. For instance, it turns out that there are two seven of hearts cards in the deck. If a foul deck is discovered during a poker hand, the usual floor ruling is that it’s as if the hand “never happened.” That is, all bets and antes are returned to the players, regardless of any action that took place. (b) Cards that have (usually inadvertently) been mixed with others or otherwise mis-dealt, and are thus dead. Usage: “The six of diamonds went off the table, so it’s a foul card, and you’ll get a replacement.”
Four-flush – (a) Four cards to a flush. Suppose you have the king of hearts and ten of hearts in your hand. If the flop is eight of hearts, jack of hearts, and four of diamonds, then you have a four-flush, and another heart will give you a flush. (b) In colloquial slang, a four-flusher is somebody who lies, bluffs, or sells something that isn’t there. The IRL phrase is taken directly from poker.
Four-liner – A board that contains four of the five cards needed to make a straight. For instance, in hold’em, if the board is , then any player holding an eight has a straight. If the board is , then any player holding a nine or four has a straight. A player holding a four has what is known as the ignorant end of the straight. Note that in Omaha, having an eight in your hand with a board of is not sufficient to make a straight, since you must use exactly two cards from your hand. Players will sometimes refer to a board of as a one-liner to the eight. This is counterintuitive and confusing.
Four of a kind – Having all four cards of the same rank in your poker hand. This hand is absurdly strong, and is often the nuts. Also called Quads. Such a hand is exceedingly rare, and its appearance in a movie or book immediately calls into question the poker authenticity of the narrative. See also straight flush.
Free card – The opportunity to see the card on the next street without having to call a bet. Usage: “I bet the flop, but was planning to take a free card on the turn if they checked to me.” Because neither player knows the other’s hand, people are rarely sure if they’re giving or taking free cards. Poker is hard.
Freeroll – (a) Any wagering situation where one player can win the entire pot, but will, at worst, chop the pot. (b) Any poker tournament which is free to enter, but has actual cash prizes for the winner(s). (c) Any IRL situation where there is no or limited downside, but there is significant upside possible. Usage: “They’re having a drawing for 10 tickets to the show tonight. I probably won’t win but it’s a freeroll.”
Freeze-out – A tournament that doesn’t have rebuys or re-entries. Thus, if you bust, you are frozen out of the tournament.
Full house – A five-card poker hand made up of three of a kind plus a pair. All full houses beat all flushes (except straight flushes) and lose to all four of a kind. Full houses are ranked first by the rank of the trips and then by the rank of the pair. Thus (nines full of deuces) beats (sevens full of aces). Boat is a synonym.
Fun player – A term that has been adopted to describe somebody who is at the poker table to (wait for this…) have fun. Sadly, for decades, serious players gave such people any number of insulting labels (e.g. tourist, said with a curled-lip sneer). The modern poker community has come to realize that people come to the table for myriad reasons, none any better than the other. Thus somebody who sits in a poker game to have a few drinks, splash around, and perhaps get lucky, has the same right to respect as the for-profit player. Including a non-pejorative label.

G

Galfond$ (Galfond bucks) – An expansion of the concept of Sklansky bucks, named after legendary high-stakes player and poker entrepreneur Phil Galfond. It’s the number of dollars that your hand wins on average against your opponent’s anticipated range. For instance, suppose your opponent shoves all-in preflop for $100. You have ace-king offsuit. You decide that their range is , , , , , , and . If you are correct, then you have 55.4% equity in the flip, and thus win $10.80 in Galfond bucks if you call. Like Sklansky bucks, you never actually get your Galfond bucks – you win or lose a lot more. But both provide an important understanding of how profitable your wager was.
Gap hand – Contrast with a connector. A hold’em hand where the ranks of the two cards are close to each other, as defined by the holder. So eight-six is a one-gapper. Nine-five is a three-gapper, which is lipstick on a pig. But a sufficiently made-up sow can be taken to the dance, and people play three-gappers. Poker is not dead.
Geometric growth – A bet sizing sequence in which the bettor bets a fixed fraction of the pot over two or more streets, with the last bet being all-in.
Get there – To hit one’s draw, or somehow end up with the best hand, with a hand that was behind. Legendary poker author Tommy Angelo once wrote that the formula for winning a monster pot is, “Spot ‘em the nuts, then get there.”
gg – Short for 'good game'. A departing salutation that originated in online poker, when a player busts out. The phrase (if two letters can be a phrase) has expanded to acknowledge the departure of anybody or anything. Usage: “I left my Ray-Bans on the boat – gg $350.” Note that gg, like e.e. cummings, must be spelled lowercase.
Gin – The exact card a player is hoping for, derived from the game gin rummy, in which a player announces "Gin" when they complete their hand. Usage: “He turned a flush, but I rivered a full house, so that was my gin card.”
Go south – In a cash game, to slip chips from your stack into your pocket. According to generally accepted rules of table stakes, this isn’t permitted. There are sound theoretical reasons for this – it would be wildly advantageous to be a short stack in early position and a deep stack in late position. However, the more quoted and emotional reasoning is that once you have chips on the table, they must stay there, because the other players have a right to try to win them from you. There is also the concept of “going north,” which is to put chips on your stack to a level greater than the buy-in cap. There’s nothing more fun than being at a table where one player is caught going south and another player is caught going north.
Gray market – Any online (or brick-and-mortar) poker provider which isn’t regulated by gaming or other governmental authorities. Such an operation may not be illegal, but it doesn’t have the credibility and reliability of one operating under the control of a governmental body.
Grind – (a) (verb) To play poker consistently and on a regular basis. This may be as a professional, or as a part-time for-profit player. Usage: “I took a week off to hike in Bryce Canyon. Now it’s back to grinding at the Aria.” Nowhere in poker is there a more apt verb. (b) (noun) The act of grinding. Usage: “I’ve seen her in the Wynn $5/10 – it seems like every day these past two weeks. The woman is on the grind.”
Grinder – (a) A person who grinds. There is a level of respect and admiration that goes with the term, because playing poker seriously, for profit, consistently, is hard work – physically, mentally, and emotionally. Usage: “She’s been a grinder in the $80/160 and bigger mixed games for five years. They don’t come any tougher than that.” (b) A sandwich on a long roll.
GTO – (a) Short for Game Theory Optimal. A strategy or play based on an attempt to model a Nash equilibrium strategy. While never fully achievable, a reasonable approximation of GTO is the most unexploitable strategy against a strong balanced opponent. (b) A muscle car built by Pontiac.
Guarantee – A tournament for which the organizer guarantees a minimum prize pool. For instance, consider a tournament with a $500 buy-in. If the tournament organizer guarantees a $50,000 prize pool, they are saying that they promise to pay out $50,000, even if they don’t get the necessary 100 entries to cover the guaranteed amount. If there are only 90 entries, then the organizer will add $5,000 to the prize pool from their pockets. This seems like a simple concept, but passed through corporate double-speak and plain old “lying," too many guaranteed tournaments really aren’t. Recent history is littered with events that didn’t fulfill a straightforward promise.
Gutshot draw – (a) A synonym of inside straight draw. Also gutter. (b) All the hope many players need to invest all of their chips on the turn, despite such a draw having only 9% equity. Poker is far from dead.

H

Hand – (a) A single game of poker, from the time the cards are dealt, until the pot is pushed. After that comes sixth street. (b) The cards that a poker player holds. This phrase is part of the American lexicon, that you “play the hand you’re dealt,” meaning that you make the best of whatever circumstances in which you find yourself. (c) The best five-card combination a player can make using the cards available to them.
Hand history – (a) A computer file in a specific format that describes all the actions taken during a poker hand. Such files are used for replayers and HUDs. (b) A verbal or written description of a poker hand, usually for the purpose of discussing how the hero played the hand, and what alternative tactics might have been better. It is settled policy in the poker community that hand histories are told in the present tense, and often in the first-person plural. This leads to hand histories sounding like the leader of a Dungeons & Dragons quest describing what actions their band is taking: “We check/click, planning to jam most turns. Ben tanks, but then unleashes an acid arrow spell, and I have to roll a D12 to see if we have a call.” (c) A long con, solely setting up a bad beat story.
Heads-up – A poker hand played between exactly two people. The hand may have begun that way, or been winnowed down to two by others folding. Contrast with multi-way.
Hero – In describing a poker hand, it is traditional to refer to the person playing the hand – the protagonist – as the hero. Similarly, the opponent is often labeled the villain. Thoughtful writers use opponent, or more usefully, the position of the opponent, e.g. hijack. Also, for reasons lost in the fog of time, the hand history teller usually refers to themselves in the first person plural, the royal we, if you will. Eventually, poker players begin to speak about all of their behavior in the first-person plural, as if they have a familiar with them.
Hero call – To make a call when the obvious, or at least more standard, play is to fold. Usage: “I only have ace-king high, but I honestly think his range is full of busted flush draws, which I beat. So I tank, for like a minute, trying to pick up a tell. Finally, I flick in the hero call and he sighs, then shows that he was bluffing with bottom pair. FML.” There is an analogous term, hero fold, but it is rarely used correctly, because for many players, every fold they make is a hero fold. That is, they have to engage in a long inner dialog to persuade themselves that yes, this time, they can actually lay down a hand. The phrase is in the Book of Poker Incantations, because by declaring "Heros pecunia!" as you call, you acknowledge that you’re almost certainly going to lose. But if – if – you win, then bards will sing your praises for generations to come. As long as people make hero calls, poker will never die.
High card – (a) The lowest hand class in standard poker rankings. All high card hands are beaten by all one-pair hands. The five-card poker hand is referred to as king high, or king-nine high (to distinguish from other king-high hands). (b) A process of randomly picking one or more players at a poker table. For instance, when a new cash game table starts, the players high card to see who gets the button first. In such a process, either the dealer deals one card for each player, or the players randomly select a card from a spread-out deck. High carding is one of the few places in poker in which suits matter. Bridge suit ranking is used, so Clubs < Diamonds < Hearts < Spades. Thus when high carding for the button, if two players both get kings, and nobody has an ace, then the king of the highest ranked suit gets the button. High carding is also used in chip races.
High hand – (a) In any split pot game, the hand which wins the high half of the pot, using traditional poker hand rankings. Contrast with the low hand, which wins the lowball half of the pot. (b) A promotion run in poker rooms in which prize money is awarded to the holder of the highest poker hand made in the room during a fixed period of time. Some people play as if the goal of the game is to receive the high hand prize. Such players are always welcome at the table.
Hijack – The position at the table two to the right of the button. The position to the left of the hijack is the cutoff, and the position to its right is the lojack.
Hit-and-run – To win a large pot (or series of large pots) in a cash game, and then immediately stand up and leave. While there is no rule against this, many home game cultures look askance at the behavior. For lack of a more sensical explanation, the players believe that they have a right to a reasonable amount of time to retrieve the lost chips from their current owner. Even in a casino poker room, some players may make inappropriate comments about a player who leaves immediately after a big win. See also, go south.
Hold’em (Texas Hold’em) – A form of poker in which each player gets two private cards, and ultimately, five community cards are put out in the center of the table. Currently the most popular form of poker around the world is no-limit hold’em. To people introduced to poker since approximately 2003, poker and no-limit hold’em are synonymous. At parties, this ignorance forces pedantic poker players into long-winded monologues about the origins and various versions of the game.
Hole camera – A camera embedded in a poker table, one at each seat. The players show their hole cards to the camera, and the images are transmitted to a control room, allowing TV shows and live streams to show viewers the players’ cards (after a delay). Also, hole cam. Before this technology, televised poker was mind-numbing. Viewers had no idea of who had what cards, what the players were thinking, etc. The hole cam was first used on a British TV show called Late Night Poker in 1999, and was an instant success. The hole cam was invented and patented by Henry Orenstein, who is an amazing story unto himself. Hole cameras have largely been replaced by RFID playing cards, which are simpler and more secure.
Hole cards – The initial down cards dealt to each player in any poker game. In hold’em, the initial two cards that each player is dealt.
Hollywood – In live poker, to act as if you have a difficult decision, when in fact, you have an easy one. Inevitably, this is used by players with extremely strong hands to feign weakness. Thus the drama is counterproductive, because the longer it goes on, the more sure the opponent is that they’re facing a monster. Usage: “He tanked for two full minutes, then sighed – he sighed – and said, ‘I’m all-in.’ I snap-folded, and told him he could have saved us all two minutes of our lives by skipping the Hollywooding.”
Home game – A poker game played in a private residence. Such games range from the neighbors gathering in Benton’s den on Tuesday evenings for $.10/$.25 seven-card stud and gossip, to massive games in bespoke game rooms with food, drinks, masseuses, and usurious rake. See also Underground game.
Horse – A person who is part of a backing deal as the player. This player is theoretically a competent poker player who doesn’t have the bankroll to play on their own, or wants to play bigger than proper bankroll management would allow them. As a rule, horses in backing deals are approximately as reliable at profit-making as their equine cousins.
HORSE – A form of mixed-game poker where the games cycle through Hold’em, Omaha (Eight or better), Razz, Seven-card stud, and Seven-card stud eight-or-better. Such games are normally played fixed limit.
House – Whatever entity is running a poker game. That can be an individual, a group of individuals, or a casino. Usage, “We take a dollar out of each pot for the house.” It is good to be the house.
HUD – Acronym for Heads Up Display. A software application that overlays an online virtual poker table with statistics about all the players at that table, including VPIP and other vital information. Such applications are usually integrated with an underlying application which is collecting hand histories for every hand that the user plays, and thus the behavior of all of their opponents. Furthermore, some parties sell huge databases of hands which they have purchased from players all across the globe. Thus a player can have thousands of hands of data on an opponent before they ever encounter that person in a game. HUDs completely changed the face of online poker when they first appeared. If you’re playing online poker without a HUD, you are bringing a knife to a gunfight – your opponents have detailed information about your playing characteristics, yet you have none about theirs.

I

ICM – Short for Independent Chip Model. A mathematical model that attempts to quantify the value of a chip stack during a percentage payout tournament. ICM helps players quantify the risk of taking certain actions during a tournament, because, unlike in a cash game, not all chips have the same value. Very specifically, a chip that you lose is worth more than a chip that you win. Players also use ICM when making deals at the end of a tournament, since it provides a model for the relative equity of each player in the remaining prize money.
Implied Odds – A variant of pot odds, where you consider chips you might win if you hit your draw. Usage, “I’m getting 3:1 pot odds, and I’m a 4:1 dog. But I think I’ll get a big bet from him if I get there, so I call.”
In action – (a) To be in the general state of playing poker regularly. Usually contrasted with being busted, and unable to play poker. Usage: “I haven’t seen Mike at MGM National Harbor recently. Is he okay?” “Yeah, I’ve seen him – mostly at Live or Parx, but he’s in action.” (b) A state where a horse in a backing deal is playing under the auspices of that deal. Usage: Horse: “I want to play the Wynn $1600 tournament today. Is that okay?” Backer: “Yeah, you’re in action.”
Incomplete information – The nature of poker, such that each player has information about their hand which their opponent(s) don’t have. Contrast this with chess, where both players know their opponent’s exact board position. While a chess player hides their strategy, they can’t hide their position. Incomplete information is integral to poker. Without it, the bluff doesn’t exist and the game collapses. Incomplete information is why poker is an excellent model for many IRL situations, including business, financial markets, and even war.
Indifference – In game theory, a state where there is no EV difference between two choices. A perfectly balanced betting strategy puts an opponent in a situation where they are indifferent between calling and folding, because both have the same EV.
Induce – A small bet (or check) designed to make an opponent put in a big bet or raise. “I bet 10% of the pot, hoping to induce a raise.”
In-position – A player who has last action during a street of betting. Contrast with out of position.
Inside straight draw – A draw to a straight where only one rank will fill the straight. For instance, if the flop in a hold’em hand is , and a player holds , then a seven, and only a seven, will make their straight. Contrast with open-ended straight draw. Also called a gutshot.
In the money – The point in a poker tournament when the bubble has burst, and all remaining players will receive some of amout of money. Usage: “They just had two quick bust-outs across the room, so we’re all in the money.”
IRL – In Real Life. Borrowed from the video gaming world. Any portion of life that isn’t related to playing poker, or being part of the poker community. Usage: “I just learned that Maureen isn’t a pro. What does she do IRL?”

J

Jackpot – Also Bad beat jackpot. A sum of money set aside by the house to be awarded when a particularly strong hand is beaten by an even stronger one. For instance, there may be a $10,000 jackpot for quad deuces (or better) beaten. The money is generally shared in varying percentages among the losing hand, the winning hand, and all other players at the table (or even in the room). In some instances, jackpots can grow to absurd sizes, and the poker room fills with people simply going through the motions of playing poker, and playing strong hands passively, all in pursuit of a wildly improbable payoff. Further confirming that poker is not dead. As an aside, and lest there be any misunderstanding, jackpots are all funded by extra rake, and there’s often an administrative fee debited from that extra rake collection. It’s good to be the house.
Jackpot Sit and Go – A type of poker tournament, usually online and short-handed, in which the winner-take-all prize pool is determined at the start from a variety of 'multipliers'. For example, if three players pay $5 each to enter the Jackpot Sit & Go, the multiplier might be anything from $10 to $1M. Lower multipliers are obviously far more common, with very large multipliers usually paying a proportion of the prize pool to all three spots. See randomized prize pool.
Jam – To go all-in, with the connotation that the person is making a bet or raise, as opposed to calling all-in for less than the bet. Usage: “She bet half-pot, and I was pretty sure she liked her hand, so I just jammed for $200 more.” Shove is a synonym.
Jedi mind tricked – A raise that is too small because the bettor bet too small, and the raiser based their raise on the too-small bet, rather than the pot size. Example: The pot is $200 on the flop, and Matt has an extremely strong hand, worthy of a raise. There’s a bet of $10 in front of him. Matt should be raising to at least $75 or so, but he looks at the $10 bet, thinks, “3.5x seems about right” and makes it $35. Matt has been Jedi mind tricked. The poker community can thank Carlos Welch.

K

Kicker – The card(s) that are unused for pairs or trips in a hand. For instance, if you have , and the flop is , then you have a pair of aces with a queen kicker. This is important, because if two players have the same pair, then the kicker(s) decide which hand is best. This word has made it into the American lexicon, to mean an unexpected or additional detail.

L

Ladder – To reach a higher pay-out in a percentage pay-out tournament. Particularly late in the tournament, pay-out jumps can represent many multiples of the buy-in, and be extremely valuable. At the final table of a large field tournament, a single rung on the ladder may be 50 or more buy-ins. Thus players are incentivized to avoid confrontations which could bust them out, in hopes of laddering to the next pay-out. Usage: “I literally folded pocket kings, but there were two short stacks, they ended up busting first, and I laddered up $2,300.”
Late registration – The ability to register into a poker tournament after the tournament has already started. Virtually all modern tournaments have this option, because it creates a larger field and larger prize pool. Furthermore, it is now conclusively shown that registering as late as possible ('max late reg') is the highest EV path into the tournament. That is, the less poker you play, the more profitable it is. This is the sort of thing that can’t be made up.
Lay down – (verb) To fold a hand. (noun) Laydown, the act of folding. Usage: “You better have it – I’m making a big laydown here.” In fact, this is pretty much the only usage – when the person is making a hero fold.
Lead – To bet when first to act. Usage: “On the flop, she led out for a quarter-pot bet.”
Leak – (a) A weakness in one’s poker strategy or tactics. Usage: “Playing a 70% VPIP is a leak that no amount of post-flop skill can overcome.” (b) Any weakness away from the poker table that directly or indirectly harms a player’s poker game. “His poker skills would get him a nice house and a Lexus, but he’s got a pit leak that makes that impossible.”
Liquidity – (a) In online poker, the pool of people who play on a given site. This is vital because large liquidity pools beget more games at more stakes, which begets more players, and everything spins up. Large liquidity pools can also produce big field tournaments with massive prizes. Of course, the opposite works in reverse. Liquidity is a constant source of discussion and negotiation around regulated online markets. (b) The amount of cash that a person has to play poker. That is, you could be a multi-millionaire on paper, but the nature of poker is that if you don’t have sufficient cash liquidity, those dollars are useless. Usage: “I have a net worth of $3 million, but only have $50K liquid, so can’t play that juicy $50/100 game.” Note that any sentence of this form is the preamble to a request for a loan and/or backing deal.
Limp – To simply call the big blind – that is, come in for the minimum amount of money. While this is perfectly legal under the rules of poker, it’s rarely the correct strategy. Ironically, it is also the strategy that almost all new players, and many experienced players, adopt. Thus the phrase, “Punish the limpers” has great currency among poker training sites, who are encouraging their students to raise, and thus exploit the passive players who have limped in.
Line – A specific set of street-by-street actions that a player takes during a poker hand. Usage: “I don’t usually take the check/call, check/call, lead line, but I was afraid she’d check back the river.” This usage is usually more than a little charitable, because it connotes the player having a plan for navigating the entire hand, rather than viscerally reacting to each new card and opponent action as it happens.
Linear range – A range with top-down value, the strongest hands to medium hands. Contrast with condensed and polarized ranges.
Live – (a) Poker played with real cards and chips on a real table in a brick and mortar building. Contrast with online poker. (b) Cards or outs that are available for a player to hit. Or ones that will actually do them some good. Usage: “He’s got the flush draw, so only the six non-spade nines and fours are live for me.” (c) A player who is likely to donate their money to the table, as in live one. There is a casino in Colma, California, called Lucky Chances. Colma is the cemetery capital of northern California, with very little other business. Late at night, when games are getting short, the veteran Lucky Chances players will say to the floorperson, “Bring us a live one!” The floor people always find this absurdly funny.
Lobby – (verb) To sit out of a poker game (usually a cash game) for an extended period. Lobbyers can cause games to struggle or even break. Thus the board people at a poker room have to make announcements such as, “Lobbyers at Table #9, you need to return to your game or we will pick you up.” There are myriad reasons for lobbying, but none of them make sense. (noun) The area of an online poker site where game options can be found (e.g. "check the cash game lobby to see if there's a table going at those stakes"), or where you'll find information on a particular tournament ("payout information can be found in the tournament lobby").
Lojack – The position at the table three to the right of the button. At a 9-max table, the position to the right of the lojack has no specific name, just some vague early position designation. At a 6-max table, the lojack is under-the-gun. The position to the left of the lojack is the hijack.
Loose – Somebody who plays too many hands. By default, this means that their VPIP is too high, but it often extends to continuing for too many streets with weak values and weak draws. Almost all poker players are loose-passive, meaning that they call when they should fold (because they’re too loose), and call when they should raise (because they’re too passive). Such players will never be long-term winners, and it is from them that for-profit players win their money.As long as there are loose-passive players, poker will never die.
Loose aggressive (LAG) – Somebody who plays a lot of hands, and is aggressive with them, particularly via a lot of preflop raising. This term, and the analogous TAG (tight aggressive) labels arose in the earlier days of poker theory, as people began to understand that aggression, in one form or another, was central to successful poker. The idea was that some winning players had a TAG style, while others had a LAG style. These phrases have fallen out of favor as solvers have shown that poker, particularly no-limit hold’em, is not a matter of “style” as much as constructing good ranges and playing them well. That said, aggression still wins.
Lowball – A form of poker in which the “worst” poker hand wins. In some versions of lowball, the nuts is an ace-to-five straight. In deuce-to-seven lowball, aces count high, and straights and flushes count against you, so the nuts is containing at least two suits. During the 1970s and 1980s, ace-to-five lowball was the most popular game in California card rooms. The Robert Altman movie, California Split, has an excellent representation of that milieu.

M

Main Event – (a) The flagship event during any poker tournament series or festival. It usually has the highest buy-in, but will always be the one on which the most attention is focused. (b) Without further context, Main Event refers to the $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em Main Event at the World Series of Poker every summer. Such is its importance in the poker community.
Main pot – The pot that is initially created at the beginning of a poker hand. If one or more players get all-in, but there are still players with chips behind, one or more side pots are created. These are distinct, and are awarded separately, from the main pot.
Make-up – A state of a backing deal in which the horse has lost money rather than won. In this state, before the horse can share in any profits, they must first pay to the backer some or all of the losses they’ve incurred, hopefully by actually winning. Frequently, this becomes a vicious cycle, in which the horse has less and less incentive to actually play poker, since any winnings are theoretically 'attached' by the backer, and the horse is merely trying to crawl out of make-up rather than receiving any money. And yet, backing deals proliferate. Poker is not dead.
Maniac – (a) Somebody who is playing wildly and recklessly, with no regard for the quality of their hand, or the money involved. (b) Anybody who is playing aggressively and forcing their opponents to make difficult decisions.
Mark-up – A surcharge added to the cost of buying a piece of a player in a tournament. For instance, suppose Bob is selling pieces of himself in a $1,500 buy-in tournament. If he were selling at par, then $150 would get you 10% of Bob’s action. However, Bob is charging 1.1 mark-up, so you have to pay $165 to get 10%. Mark-up started because 90% of poker players think they’re better than 90% of the other players, and because backers are the same people that pay Ticketmaster’s convenience fees without complaint. Mark-up percentages rose to levels that were almost provably absurd (nobody has that much of an edge on the field), leading to self-appointed 'mark-up police' calling out those who were charging particularly egregious mark-ups. A legendary poker player even set up a betting site to allow people to buy and sell players at mark-up, such that the value would find its free market level. The economics of mark-up have cooled off a bit, but the practice is still the norm, proving that poker and Ticketmaster will never die.
Match the stack – A poker room policy that allows players in a cash game to top up their stack to the largest stack at the table. Suppose the buy-in cap is $500. Now two players with $500 stacks get all-in, and the winner of the pot now has $1,000. At this point, any player at the table can top up their stack to $1,000. This process continues, and such games can end up with enormous stacks, representing many hundreds of big blinds. While match the stack is popular with winning and gambly players, it’s provably bad for poker ecosystems.
MDF – An acronym for Minimum Defense Frequency. MDF is a measurement that tells you how often you need to call to make your opponent’s zero-equity hands indifferent between bluffing and giving up. MDF was added to the Book of Poker Incantations in the late 20-teens ("Semper mori defendere!"). This spell allows its user to make hopeless calls of clear value bets without loss of admiration. While the caster still loses their money, they can hold their head high and know that in a nearby theoretical universe, their call was correct.
Mechanic – Short for card mechanic. A poker dealer who can manipulate the deck to cheat. There are dozens of ways to do such manipulations, and the best card mechanics are all but undetectable. Fortunately, such people are few and far between.
Meet-up game – A gathering of poker players, usually organized around one or more content creation heroes, typically vloggers. Such meet-ups, or MUGs, were first created by Andrew Neeme and Brad Owen in the late 20-teens. The meet-up game, along with the poker vlog, is arguably the greatest addition to the poker world in the last five or ten years. It brings players together to celebrate the game and the community, and puts less emphasis on winning money.
Mental game – Any aspect of a poker player’s skill set that is not related to the actual play of the hand. Very specifically, it includes their inclination to tilt, or lack thereof. Poker can be a cruel game that taxes the heart and stomach more than it taxes the brain. Many people who have the innate skills to win lots of money never succeed because of leaks in their mental game. Authors and coaches such as Tommy Angelo and Elliot Roe have explored mental game topics and completely changed poker.
Micro-stakes – A game at stakes that are worthless by IRL standards. For instance, a no-limit hold’em game with $0.01 and $0.02 blinds. This term became the title of the single greatest series of videos in poker history, The Micros.
Milestone satellite – A type of satellite tournament. In a milestone satellite, any time a player accumulates a certain number of chips (usually a multiple of 10-15 times the starting stack), they automatically win a seat to the target tournament. Milestone satellites solve many problems associated with traditional satellites, not least by reducing the incentive to not play poker. The preceding sentence is not a misstatement.
Misclick – To click the wrong button in an online poker client. Usage: “I turned the nut flush, but my mouse slipped and I accidentally hit the ‘Fold’ button. Stupid misclick cost me $47.” The phrase has now expanded to live poker. Usage: “I thought the pot was $100, so I bet $75. Turns out the pot was closer to $200. Just a misclick.”
Misdeal – (a) Any circumstance in which the cards aren’t dealt correctly, and the hand has to be restarted. For instance, in a hold’em hand, if it turns out that the player in the hijack seat has three cards, the dealer will probably declare a misdeal. (b) Any circumstance in which a player is hoping to have the hand restarted. For instance, the player gets jack-three offsuit, and then sees a card accidentally exposed. They may say, “Misdeal!” hoping to get a fresh pair of cards. They’re wasting their time. As poker players and managers evolve, misdeals are becoming rarer, as there is less concern about the 'right order' of the cards, and more acceptance of random card theory. Nevertheless, many players and floor people have an almost religious attachment to the deck as it was originally shuffled. If that arrangement is messed up in any way, they want to restart the entire process from scratch, lest universal disorder ensue. And thus, poker will never die.
Missed blind – Players in cash games are required to pay their blinds (whatever blind(s) the game has) during each orbit of the button. If a player misses one or more blinds because they’re not at the table, the dealer will put a missed blind button in front of their seat. This indicates that when the player returns to the game, they must either wait for the big blind, or post a blind to be dealt in immediately.
Mississippi straddle – A form of straddle in which players may straddle from any position at the table. Such a straddle often devolves to a button straddle, in which the straddle is always on the button, and action starts with the small blind position. Mississippi straddles in general, and button straddles in particular, are a blight upon the face of poker. At least in theory, they force the blinds to play absurdly tight, and tilt an already unlevel playing field further toward the button. Despite this, poker room managers continue to give in to the pros’ demands for button (rather than UTG) straddles. Poker is not dead, but those room managers aren’t helping it thrive.
Mixed games – (a) Any poker game made up of a combination of different forms of poker, e.g. HORSE. That and some other game mixes are sufficiently well established that they have names, and have even been enshrined as WSOP events. Others are made up of a dizzying array of wacky games, each one chosen by the button, in which nobody is quite sure what the rules are. Such games are prime fishing grounds for those with solid poker fundamentals, who can quickly deduce correct strategy while their opponents flounder. Do you see what just happened there? (b) Since 2003, anything that isn’t no-limit hold’em, or PLO.
Mixed strategy – Any solver strategy that entails two or more choices at the same node. For instance, “It’s a mix – when the big blind checks, the lojack checks back 40% and B70 60%.” That is, in this exact situation, the solver will flip a weighted coin, choosing to check 40% of the time, and bet 70% of the pot the other 60% of the time. In some cases, the solver may mix across 3-4 different bet sizes, plus checking. Humans can’t do that.
Moneymaker boom – The explosion of poker popularity that took place when Tennessee accountant Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP Main Event in May of 2003, defeating the very best professional players in Las Vegas. The world of poker since Moneymaker is unrecognizable from that which preceded him, and those who have come to poker since cannot fathom the prior poker universe. Aspects of Moneymaker’s win are carved into the poker consciousness. For instance, if you ask a veteran about Moneymaker’s Bluff, they will get a faraway look in their eyes and then tell you an incredible story.
Monsters under the bed – Also MUTB. To play in fear of a better hand, even if that hand is extremely unlikely. Usage: “So I check back the turn.” “What? You have two pair.” “Yeah, but I’m worried about a set.” “Don’t be nuts – that’s monsters under the bed.”
Monte Carlo simulation – A general computing term for any simulation that consists of randomly generating potential outcomes. This is done when exhaustively determining the possible outcomes is computationally impossible. For instance, to determine the exact equities of pocket nines versus ace-king offsuit all-in preflop would require (using brute force methods) evaluating the winner of 48 x 47 x 46 x 45 x 44 = 205.5 million run-outs. However, by randomly choosing five board cards, determining the winner, and repeating that process 100,000 times (a factor of 2,000 smaller), the simulation produces an answer that is within a tiny error of the exact result.
Muck – (a) (noun) In live poker, there is a small pile of cards in the center of the table, containing cards folded by players and (sometimes) burn cards. This is known as the muck. Traditionally, a hand that touched the muck was dead, and could not be awarded the pot. According to modern poker rulings (including the TDA), this is no longer true. However, many dealers still consider the muck some kind of magic death substance, and ritually touch a folded hand to it before revealing it to ensure that it is well and truly beyond saving. (b) (verb) To throw cards into the muck. Usage: “He saw that she had a higher straight, so he mucked his cards.”
Multi-table playing – To play more than one table at a time on an online site. When online poker first started, this wasn’t even possible, but within a short time, as the online sites adapted their software to permit it, it became common. Some players, perhaps using attention-enhancing medications, play 24 or more tables simultaneously. Usage: “Ya, it’s Sunday so I’m 5-tabling Stars, and 4-tabling GG.” After people started multi-tabling online, a few people have actually done it in live tournament settings, running between two areas of a tournament floor, to compete in two completely different events. And they say poker is dead.
Multi-table tournament – A tournament that has more than one table (contrast with sit and go). As players bust out, tables are broken down and combined, until only the final table is left. MTTs, as they are known, drive much of the public poker narrative, since they have a beginning and a (sometimes) thrilling end, with a single winner hoisting a trophy, or a bracelet.
Multi-way – Any pot that is played among more than two people. Contrast with heads-up.
Mystery Bounty – A type of bounty tournament in which the size of the bounties varies, and each bounty amount is put into an envelope. Then the envelopes are mixed together. Whenever a player wins a bounty, they go and pick an envelope to determine what bounty amount they get. Such tournaments are often structured to have one or two bounties that represent the equivalent of finishing at the final table, so this gives everybody a shot at huge prizes, without negotiating their way through the entire field. Mystery bounties have become wildly popular, and are likely to become only more prevalent.

N

Nickel – A $5 chip. Usage: “The bet’s $60, sir. You’ve only got $55 out there, so I need another nickel." See also, Quarter.
Nit – (a) A term of respect and honor for a player who plays tight, and only gambles when they’re +EV. (b) An epithet directed at such a player, suggesting that poker players should be willing to gamble it up and take -EV situations, because it’s good for the game, or manly, or some other inexplicable reason. (c) Anybody who is hung up about details of how something is done at the table. Usage: “Most people would let that slide, but Bob is a rules nit and called a string bet on the poor guy.”
Nit roll – To tank for a long time before calling a river bet, ultimately call, but then expose a hand that is almost always best, and should not have required the long tank. Nit rolling is more forgivable than slow rolling, because in the former case, there is at least a plausible case that the caller had a tough decision. The slow roller knows that they have the best hand, and are delaying its exposure for the sheer schadenfreude.
Node – A given point in a poker hand. This term first came into poker via solvers, which treat poker hands as mathematical trees. The point at which those trees diverge are called nodes. Thus the solver crowd has begun to refer to those decision points as nodes. Usage: “If we get to the node where he’s checked, and we’ve bet, he shouldn’t have many check-raises.” It’s worth noting that this term didn’t exist in the poker vocabulary in 2010, and is now in common usage around the poker world. Poker continues to thrive and grow, and is indeed, not dead.
Node-lock – The process of forcing a solver to take a particular action at some node, rather than allowing it to find the equilibrium solution. This enables solver users to model non-equilibrium human behavior. Usage: “I know the solver wants to pure check, but let’s node-lock a B35 like the lojack actually did, and see what happens from there.”
No-limit – (a) A betting format in which a player may bet all of their chips at any time. More correctly, the player may bet the effective stack at any time. Contrast with pot limit and fixed limit. (b) Short for no-limit hold’em, because people brought to poker since the Moneymaker boom have no concept of any poker game that isn’t hold’em or PLO. This is no different than saying Vanilla when you mean Vanilla ice cream, but that’s where the vocabulary is these days, more’s the pity.
Nosebleeds – Poker (cash or tournament) played for staggering sums of money. Taken from the term for the worst seats at a stadium or concert venue, ostensibly so high that they cause nosebleeds.
Nuts – (a) The very best hand possible. In draw poker that would be a royal flush, and in deuce-to-seven lowball, it’s of at least two different suits. Because of the community cards in flop games, the nuts is generally much lower than the best hand in the deck (i.e. a royal flush). For instance, in a hold’em game, if the board is , with no flush possible, then the nuts is a set of kings, and a player holding a pocket pair of kings would know that they are going to win the pot. (b) The best of anything. Usage: “Have you had the sushi at Wazu? It’s the nuts.”

O

Odds – The relative probability of an event happening, normally expressed as a ratio, such as 4:1, meaning that the event has an 80% chance of occurring. The word odds is used casually IRL, but has specific meaning in poker (and gambling), most notably pot odds in poker.
Offsuit – (a) Two cards in a hold’em hand that are of different suits. Usage: “I just had nine-seven offsuit, so I folded.” (b) Any card whose suit is irrelevant. Usage: “There was a flush draw on the flop, but the turn was an offsuit four, so I still had the nuts.”
Omaha – A flop game in which all players are dealt four cards, rather than two, of which they must use two in combination with the board. Omaha is played in a variety of formats, the most popular being PLO. Omaha/8 – a split pot game played 8-or-better – is a frequent component of mixed games, and Big O – 5-card PLO played 8-or-better – is a favorite of action junkies. PLO and Big O are both legendary for their wild variance and insane pots. Because of the number of cards each player has, two people can get all-in on the flop, expose their cards, and still not be sure who is in front. The frequent conclusion is, “It’s a flip – let’s run it twice.” The popularity of PLO and Big O is proof that (a) poker is gambling, and (b) poker is not dead.
OMC – Acronym for Old Man Coffee. A player who plays as if they’re at the table to sit, sip coffee, and watch sports on the TVs as much as gamble at poker. Somebody who may or may not raise with pocket jacks or ace-king in hold’em. The phrase arose during the dawn of the poker vlog, and may have originated with some vlogger. Whatever, it is now part of the vocabulary. The female analog is OWT.
On their backs – (a) A state of two players’ cards being face-up (i.e. on their backs), because the players are all-in for the effective stack. TDA rules require that all players turn their cards face-up during an all-in in a tournament – this helps prevent collusion. Most casino cash games do not have such a rule, and allow a player to reveal their hand only if they want to claim the pot. (b) An instruction from the dealer to the players to turn their cards face-up. This is more common in the UK, where the dealer routinely says to all-in players, “On their backs, ladies and gents.”
One-chip rule – (a) An arcane rule in live poker that one chip placed without verbal announcement is a call of a prior bet rather than a raise. For instance, suppose Matt bets $40, and now Mickey puts out a single $100 chip. If Mickey says nothing, it is not a raise to $100, but simply a call of Matt’s $40 bet. However, if there is no bet in front of Mickey, and she silently puts out the $100 chip, it’s a $100 bet. Live poker rules are hard. (b) An even more arcane rule in live poker that a single chip clearly placed as a bet represents a call of any prior bet. Suppose Ned bets $250, and Debbie tosses out a single $1 chip. Insane as it may seem, Debbie has now technically called Ned’s bet. The same would be true if Ned had gone all-in for $4,000. Needless to say, this play is the opening gambit in a dizzying array of angles. Furthermore, many regulatory jurisdictions do not allow the house to force a player to complete a bet if their chips aren’t physically in the pot. Yes, this means that, in the scenario above, if Ned turns over the winner, Debbie can literally stand up, pick up her remaining chips, and walk away, down only the $1 with which she had called. Ned has no recourse, and the house won’t make Ned whole, because of potential joint scams by Ned and Debbie. Debbie may not be allowed to play until she makes good on the wager, but Ned will likely never see the money he’s owed.
One-gap – A hold’em hand whose two cards are two ranks apart, e.g. .
One player to a hand – A universally enforced rule in live poker that no player can receive advice on how to play a hand from anybody else, be they other players or spectators. This rule needs to be brought up more than one might think – it stands in stark contrast to many home game cultures.
One time – The most powerful spell in the Book of Poker Incantations. This conjuration allows a player to get any card or cards they need by shouting, “Olim!” The spell is best used just before the flop, because it allows the player to select three cards rather than just one. The unique aspect of this spell is that it works only once during a player’s poker career (thus its name). Virtually all poker players squander it, using it for some penny-ante flip, and winning the hand, but not realizing that the spell is now useless to them forever. Among those who have used “Olim!” correctly are Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Weinman.
Online poker – Poker played over the Internet, rather than live, in a brick-and-mortar building. The world and history of online poker are deserving of a book, rather than an entry in a glossary. Start with Bet, Raise, Fold, and go from there.
Open – To raise as the first person entering a pot. Contrast with limp, where the player merely calls the big blind amount.
Open-ended – A straight draw which can be completed at either end, and thus has eight outs. For instance, if Brad holds in a hold’em game, and the flop is , then either a ten or five (eight different cards) will give Brad a straight, so he has an open-ended draw. Contrast with inside straight draw.
OPM – Acronym for Other People’s Money. This can be proximate to a loan, backing deal, or any of a variety of mechanics. The underlying concept is that a poker player is at the table, wagering in a game of chance, with money that isn’t theirs. Poker is not dead.
Orbit – One full revolution of the button around the table. Usage: “How long has the #3 seat been gone?” “I dunno – two or three orbits?”
Out – A card that completes a draw. So if you are drawing to a flush, you have nine outs. That is, nine cards in the deck will complete your flush. You are said to have a nine-outer. Legendary poker player and gambler Mike McClain (RIP) was once at a home poker game, and was told that a fellow player had to leave early to pick up his fiancée at the airport. An hour later, McClain told a newcomer that that player had to leave to pick up his wife. “Fiancée,” corrected the player. “Oh, you have outs.”
Out of position – A player who must act first in a pot, or at least, not last. The difficulty of playing out-of-position can’t be overstated, and solver results have proven that the out-of-position player under-realizes their equity.
Out-of-turn – To act before it’s your turn on a betting street. While this is normally not a big deal, there are a number of angles that derive from purposely acting out of turn. Thus there are rules that apply to out-of-turn action. For instance, suppose Carlos bets $100 out-of-turn when it’s actually Andrew’s turn to bet. Once order is restored, if Andrew checks, then Carlos is forced to make the exact $100 bet that he had made out-of-turn. However, if Andrew bets, then Carlos has all the normal options available to him. Live poker rules are hard.
Overbet – A bet that is larger than the current size of the pot. Interestingly, this term has gained currency only since the dawn of the solver era. That’s because, before solvers, nobody ever bet more than the pot – it was unthinkable. At least, anybody who did was considered a total fish. Then, in early 2017, an AI poker engine called Libratus was pitted against four top no-limit hold’em players, and resoundingly beat them all. One of the most startling features of its game was to make overbets, sometimes twice the size of the pot, or more. Nobody ever told the AI that it wasn’t allowed to do that, and the rules of the game clearly permitted it. So when overbetting felt like the right decision, it did. Solvers have confirmed that such massive bets are theoretically correct in many spots, and they have become a part of the best players’ arsenals.
Overcall – To call after a player has already called in front of you. Overcalling requires having a much stronger hand range than calling heads-up, since your hand must beat at least two other players.
Overcard – A card that is higher than any card on the board. For instance, if you have in a hold’em game, and the flop is , then you have one overcard.
Overlay – Any difference between the total buy-ins in a guaranteed tournament, and the guarantee amount. For example, suppose a tournament promoter sets up a tournament with a $120 buy-in, and a $30,000 guarantee. $20 of the buy-in is the tournament fee, so $100 of each buy-in goes into the prize pool. It takes 300 entries to reach the $30,000 guarantee amount, so if there are 275 entries, then there is a 25 x $100 = $2,500 overlay. Because the tournament promoter must pay the $2,500 out of their pocket, each runner in the tournament is getting bonus EV on their buy-in. On occasion, some online poker sites have ended up with overlays of over a million dollars because of errors in setting up a tournament. This is obviously an EV windfall for the players who bought in.
Overpair – A pair higher than the top card on the board. Overpairs are particularly valuable in hold’em because they beat all top pairs, which are usually strong hands, and the overpair is disguised a bit.

P

Pair – Any two cards of the same rank. A single pair is the second lowest hand in traditional poker hand rankings, ahead of only high card. All one-pair hands are beaten by all two-pair hands.
Passive – A player who isn’t sufficiently aggressive in trying to win a pot. Such players tend to call when they should raise. The most virulent form of this disease is to be loose-passive.
Pat – (a) To stand pat, meaning to draw no cards in any form of draw poker. If you stand pat, you’re asserting that your hand is extremely strong, and can’t (or is unlikely to) improve. Of course, because it’s poker, you may not be telling the truth. (b) A hand (typically in draw poker) that uses all five (or four) cards, so no further draws are taken. Usage: “Johnny didn’t take the second draw, so I assume he has a pat hand.” (c) In any IRL situation, choose to not make a change when you have the option of doing so. Usage: “Jaman looked at the new Tesla model, but he liked his model just fine, so he stood pat.”
Pay jump – A point in a tournament pay-out structure at which the pay-out increases with the next bust-out. Example: suppose the 10th through 13th place finishers in a tournament get $500, but the 9th place finisher gets $650. There is now a $150 pay jump from 10th to 9th, and a mini-bubble is created, where there is some ICM pressure to ladder-up.
Pay off – To call a bet, usually with the assumption that you’re unlikely to win. Pot odds often require a poker player to call a bet even though they have less than an even chance of winning. Usage: “I thought she probably had the flush, but getting 3:1 pot odds, I decided to pay her off. Obviously, I was right, and she had the flush.”
Pay-out – (a) A prize that is awarded in a poker tournament. Usage: “I think 4th place pays $1200 – let me check the pay-out table.” (b) The process of awarding prizes to people who cash in a tournament. Usage: “They’re paying out 15% of the field, which seems just about right.”
Peel – (a) To look at your cards. Usage: “I was chatting with the #4 seat, and peeled pocket jacks just as the action got to me. Now what?” (b) To call a bet so you can see the next card. Usage: “Meh. Bottom pair, three-flush, and an overcard on the flop. The bet was small so I peeled a turn.”
Percentage payout – A poker tournament in which multiple prizes are awarded, in descending value, starting from first place. As a trivial example, imagine a 10-person sit-and-go that pays 50% of the prize pool to the winner, 30% to the second place finisher, and 20% to the third place finisher. This is a percentage payout tournament. Contrast with winner take all, where the person who wins is the only one to receive a prize.
Pick up – To remove a player’s chips from the table. Normally, this is in a cash game when the player has been lobbying for too long. The player’s chips will be kept at the cage, and they can retrieve them when they return. In a tournament, a player is usually blinded out if they’re not at the table, but if they leave the tournament for any reason (such as being disqualified for a rules violation) their chips are picked up.
Piece – A share of a poker player’s action. Usage: Ashley: “Do you have 100% of yourself in this game?” Johnny: “Not quite – I sold a couple of small pieces – but I have over 90%.”
Pit – (a) One of the outer circles of Hell, where bankrolls evaporate in hours or days. A place where life leaks destroy promising professional poker careers. (b) The table games at a casino, as distinguished from the sports book, slot machines, and the poker room.
Pitch – The act of dealing a poker game. Usage: “Where’s Dylan? He’s my favorite dealer.” “He’s at Table #5, pitching cards.”
Play the board – In hold’em, to have a hand that cannot beat the five board cards. Thus, you are playing the board, and the very best you can do is chop the pot with all remaining players. For instance, if you have , and the board runs out , then your pair of sevens has been counterfeited, and your best hold’em hand is two pair: kings and nines, with a seven kicker. Note that you can’t play the board in Omaha, because you must use exactly two cards from your hand.
PLO – Short for Pot Limit Omaha. After no-limit hold’em, the most popular poker game in casinos. Because each player gets four cards, the average winning hand is much stronger, by absolute poker hand ranking, than in hold’em. PLO is a favorite game of people who want to gamble big with high variance, and such games often feature the biggest pots and wildest action found in a poker room.
Pocket pair – In hold’em, having a pair as one’s starting hand. Usage: “I was in the cutoff, and woke up with pocket tens.”
Poker – (a) A card game of incomplete information, played by two or more people. (b) Any confrontation in business, politics, or warfare in which two parties are attempting to out-maneuver each other, but each has incomplete information about the other party’s resources, intentions, and resolve. (c) A magical world filled with people from all walks of life, and from all over the world. Humans from grammar school age to centenarians. Women, men, and those who blur or cross the lines between the two. Poker is filled with recs, regs, amateurs, pros, fun players, and grinders. Fanbois, wannabes, railbirds, heroes, villains, cheaters, and crooks. Backers and horses. Dealers, floorpeople, board staff, chip runners, and tournament directors. Writers, bloggers, vloggers, streamers, and podcasters. Broadcasters, announcers, color commentators, and off-color commentators. Poker is played in kitchens, basements, dining rooms, garages, warehouses, army barracks, on ships and planes, in luxurious casinos, tiny two-table cardrooms, and local pubs. If you have a relatively flat surface and a deck of cards, you can have a poker game. Poker is played for candy, pennies, houses, or the fate of the planet. Poker is a playground and battleground where wits, psyches, emotions, intuition, stomachs, and hearts are tested. When the poker world is at its best, everybody is welcomed to the table and dealt in. It is a cosmos where skill, discipline, and luck prevail – where upbringing, pedigree, and privilege play no part. Poker is all of this and more, so as long as the human race survives, so will poker. Poker is not dead.
Polarized range – A range that contains very strong hands and very weak hands. Some people like to describe a polar range as “nuts or nothing.” Contrast with condensed and linear ranges.
Position – Where a player in a poker hand sits relative to the button. There are informal terms, early position for players who are among the first to act after the blinds, and late position for those who act shortly before the button. Correct poker strategy is intimately tied to the player’s position in the hand. New poker players are notoriously insensitive to position, and this is one of the things that makes them easy pickings for more experienced and skilled players.
Post – To pay a blind bet, used in particular when returning to a cash game table. Because each player is responsible for paying the blinds during each orbit of the button, if a player misses their blinds, when they return, they must either wait for the big blind to come around, or post a blind in whatever position they’re in.
Post-flop – Any action that takes place after the flop in a hold’em or other flop game. This can generally refer to any street of betting after the flop. Usage: “Ryan probably plays a bit too wide preflop, but his post-flop skills are such that he gets away with it.”
Pot – (a) The chips that have been collected in the middle of the table during a poker hand. (b) The entirety of a poker hand. Usage: “Paul and I had been in each other’s sights all evening, and I knew we were going to play a big pot at some point.” (c) A binding announcement in any pot-limit game that the bettor wants to bet an amount equal to the current size of the pot. Usage: Casey: “Pot.” Dealer: “$475.” From the moment that Casey says the word 'pot', he is committed to betting the size of the pot, whatever that is.
Pot-committed – (a) A situation in which a player has sufficiently few chips left, relative to the size of the pot, that they can’t realistically fold. That is, the pot odds they are being offered are good enough that they have to call with essentially any hand. (b) An invocation, said in a grave Potterian tone, that magically justifies calling off any bet, with any hand. “Commissum est ollam!” appears in the Book of Poker Incantations. This spell supersedes all theory and pot odds calculations, and makes the speaker impervious to the slurs and barbs of their fellow players. As long as such magic survives, so will poker.
Pot control – To check back on a street to keep the pot size relatively smaller than if you had bet and were called (or raised). This phrase appears in the Book of Poker Incantations, because it is routinely used when the in-position player literally doesn’t know if they should bet or check. By saying the phrase, Pot control (“Olla imperium!” in the Book) they dupe the listener into believing this was a well-constructed plan to manage the pot size, rather than an inability to decide, which froze the player into inaction (i.e. checking). As an aside, out-of-position players sometimes use the phrase, but like any misused spell, it serves little purpose, since the in-position player always has the option to bet. In a no-limit game, the in-position player can bet the entire remaining effective stack if they wish, thus the out-of-position player has minimal ability to pot control.
Pot limit – A betting structure in poker in which a bettor may bet in the range from one big blind to the current size of the pot. So in a $1/2 pot limit Omaha game, if Andrew is about to bet, and there is $100 in the pot, then he may bet anything from $2 to $100. Things get more complicated for raises, since they include a theoretical call by the raiser. For instance, suppose Andrew bets $75 into the $100 pot. Now it’s Brad’s turn, and he wants to raise “the pot.” First you include the $75 Brad would have to call, making the total pot $100 + $75 + $75 = $250. Now Brad can raise $250 on top of Andrew’s $75, making it $325 to go.
Pot odds – The ratio of the size of the pot, compared to the amount a player must call if they wish to continue. Suppose Gloria and Caitlyn are heads-up in a pot. There is $50 in the pot, and Caitlyn bets $25. The pot is now $75, and Gloria must call $25 to continue. Gloria is getting 3:1 pot odds, and fundamentally must have a 25% chance of winning the pot to call. Pot odds is the basic risk/reward mechanic that drives all of poker, and is ultimately at the heart of all poker strategy. Pot odds is also in the Book of Poker Incantations. This spell allows a player to call with ATC, if there are enough others already in the pot. Usage: there is a raise UTG, then five callers. The big blind doesn’t even look at their hand, but simply says, “Olla magnum!” and tosses in calling chips. Poker will never die.
Preflop – In a flop game (e.g. hold’em, Omaha), all the action that takes place before the flop is put out. Because every player must make a VPIP decision preflop on every hand, correct preflop play is at the base of good strategy for any flop game. And yet, it’s an area in which almost all people play poorly, usually by playing far too many hands.
Price – The odds being offered, usually with respect to pot odds. Usage: “Ethan only bet a quarter of the pot – getting that price I had to call.”
Private game – A poker game which is invitation-only. This covers a great deal of ground, from a typical home game, to a high-stakes game at a casino which is only available to invited players.
Prize pool – The total amount of money that will be paid out to players in a tournament. This seems like a simple concept. However, tournament organizers sometimes say prize pool when they mean, “All the money we’ve collected,” which means that tournament fees and/or tokes for the staff will be removed from the funds before they are distributed to the players who cash. This belies the definition of prize pool.
Pro (fessional) – (a) A person who makes their living solely, or perhaps mostly, from poker winnings. (b) Anybody who says they’re a professional poker player. Despite the inpenetrability of this concept (imagine becoming a dentist simply by announcing that you’re a dentist), it is an absolute fact of the poker world. Perhaps more accurately, it is any poker player that doesn’t have a real job. Surely any vocation at which one can so easily be a professional will never die.
Progressive bounty – A type of bounty tournament in which the bounty on a player’s head becomes larger as they eliminate others as the tournament progresses. Also known as Progressive Knock-Out or PKO tournaments, such tournaments are particularly popular online, since it’s impractical to run them live. As the bounties grow, the incentive to bust certain players and win their bounty can override that to actually cash or reach the final table.
Protect – (a) To make a bet or raise that charges inferior and drawing hands to out-run the current best hand. See equity protection. Usage: “I was pretty sure my pocket nines were best, so I bet half pot to protect my equity.” (b) To cover one’s cards at a live poker table with a chip or other object. This ensures they can’t be fouled or inadvertently scooped up by the dealer. (c) Protected – A hand which has been tabled at showdown, and thus speaks. That is, if it is the winning hand, then the dealer has the obligation to push the pot to the player holding that hand, even if that player doesn’t recognize it for the best hand.
Punt – (a) To lose a pot in a spectacular, self-inflicted manner. Borrowed from the American football term. Usage: “Warren was on screaming tilt, and managed to punt off his next two buy-ins within half an hour.” (b) In the UK, to gamble on anything.
Pure – When discussing solver behavior, a node at which the solver always takes a single action. Contrast with mix. Usage: “When the big blind bets, the solver pure calls with top set.”
Push – (a) To go all-in. Usage: “I had four bigs, so when the first card I peeled was an ace, I just pushed.” (b) The act of the dealer awarding a pot to the winner of the hand. Usage: “Dave didn’t think his pair of fives was any good, but he tabled them anyway. To his surprise, the other two players mucked and the dealer pushed him the pot.” The expression 'push a pot wrong' means to award a pot to the wrong player, because of dealer error or other oversight. (c) The transition from one dealer to another. Dealers in poker rooms normally have 30-45 minute downs, then rotate to another table. Usage: “Nancy, I know you’re on break, but could you push Aldrich for 10 minutes? He needs to take a phone call.”
Push/Fold – Having a sufficiently short stack in a no-limit hold’em game (usually a tournament) that your only two reasonable options preflop are to push or fold. Such situations are frequent for tournament players, and there are push/fold charts that indicate how strong a hand a player needs to go all-in, given a certain stack size.
Put on – To decide that your opponent in a poker game has a certain hand, or range of hands. Usage: “I put you on ace-king, so I jammed with my overpair.” In older poker days, it was common for one player to put their opponent on a single hand: “I figured you for ace-queen.” Modern poker theory (and common sense) have deprecated this practice, in favor of putting opponents on a range of hands. Despite this, you will frequently hear, “I put you on ace-king.” Poker is not dead.

Q

Quads – Four of a kind. Also, Quadzilla.
Quarter – A $25 chip. Usage: “It’s a $5/10 game, but they’ve got a mandatory quarter straddle on, so there’s chips flying.” Single best usage of all time: A Tunica, MS dealer pointed to a one-chip $25 bet on the felt, and sang, “Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares." See also, Nickel.

R

Rack – (a) An acrylic holder for poker chips. Almost without exception, chip racks are designed to hold five stacks of 20 chips each, for 100 chips total. (b) A plastic or metal device in front of the dealer, in which they keep change for players, blind buttons, all-in buttons, etc. This is also called the well.
Ragged – A board which doesn’t offer much in the way of potential draws. See also dry. Usage: “The flop was K-9-something rainbow. I don’t remember the exact third card but it was a raggedy board.”
Rail – (a) (noun) A physical or virtual barrier separating poker tables and players from onlookers. Such onlookers are referred to as railbirds. (b) (verb) To stand at the rail to watch and encourage (or disparage) poker players, usually in a tournament. Usage: “After busting out of the Main, he stood at the rail, railed the remaining players, and railed at the injustice of it all.”
Railbird – (a) A person who is standing at the rail of a poker tournament to observe and cheer on their favorite players. (b) In a normal casino poker room, somebody who is on the rail because they’re out of action, or, more precisely, busto.
Rainbow – Any flop or board that doesn’t have two or more cards of the same suit, and thus no flush draw is possible. See also badugi. Usage: “Flop was king-seven-four rainbow – I don’t remember the specific suits.”
Raise – To put in more than the necessary number of chips to call. For instance, if Matt bets $50, Brian can then call the $50 but he may also choose to raise, and if so, must make it at least $100 to go. In the UK, the first person to bet on any given street is said to raise that amount, but in the US the word raise is generally reserved for raising over an existing bet. The UK is beginning to adopt that usage as well, either because of TV, or because it’s clearer.
Rake – Any money that the house removes from each poker pot. Because poker is played among the players at the table, and the house isn’t involved in the wagers, the rake provides income to the house in exchange for use of the table, dealer, etc.
Rakeback – A partial rake rebate that some online poker sites give to the people who play a large number of hours on that site. In the early days of the poker boom (2003-2008), rakeback was sufficiently generous that it could provide a person with a living wage. And to that extent, one could be a rakeback pro, not beating the actual online poker game one was playing, but living on the rakeback proceeds alone.
Random card theory – The concept that there isn’t a 'correct' sequence of the cards in a shuffled deck, and instead, if all the cards are still random, and no player has information that the other players don’t have, all is well. For example: suppose, in putting out a flop, the dealer mistakenly spreads four, instead of three, cards. Traditionally, there have been attempts to figure out which card shouldn’t have been in the flop. Which were the actual correct three cards? Instead, random card theory (and common sense) argue that it doesn’t matter. The dealer (or floor) shuffles the four cards together face down, pulls one out, shows it to the table, and tosses it into the muck. Then they turn up the remaining three cards, that’s the flop, order is restored in the universe, and poker can proceed apace. Recent TDA rules and recommendations (as of 2022) have suggested this exact approach to such errors. Note that, in this circumstance, many floor people will rule that the fourth card be treated as the burn card before the turn. This is a poor ruling, since the entire purpose of the burn card is to protect the top of the deck during betting action. That is, the burn card’s sole job is to prevent any player from seeing the next card that will come off the deck and go into play. Since the deck was uncovered during the four-card flop drama, whatever card was on top of the deck during that time should be burned prior to the turn. Thus the card removed from the four-card flop should be treated identically to a boxed card and discarded. Since all cards are random, there is no loss of game integrity, and security is increased. Speaking of order in the universe: there are 8x10⁶⁷ possible sequences of a full deck of playing cards (for comparison, this is almost identical to the estimated number of atoms in the Milky Way). Thus, stressing about which particular one of the 8x10⁶⁷ deck orderings the hand began with is a waste of valuable time that could be used playing poker.
Random number generator (RNG) – A device or algorithm used to generate random numbers, which, in turn, control the shuffling of virtual decks of cards on online poker sites. No software algorithm can generate true random numbers (as famously stated by John von Neumann), so legitimate online poker sites use real-world physical input from specialized devices to 'seed' their RNGs. Shocking side note: the automatic shufflers used in live poker tables (e.g. Deckmate) don’t 'shuffle' cards, per se. They also use an RNG to assign a position from 1-52 for each card, and then place that card in its correct place. In short, the decks for most live poker games are shuffled identically to how they’re shuffled for online poker. Despite this, many poker players believe that human dealers produce a more random shuffle than the shuffling machines, and the shuffling machines produce a more random shuffle than the online virtual deck shufflers. Poker is alive and well.
Randomized Prize pool – A type of sit-and-go in which the players don’t know the size of the prize pool when they join. The buy-in is fixed, and there is a minimum prize pool. But there is a randomizing element such that the sit-and-go may have payouts that are dramatically bigger than the sum of the buy-ins. This is supported by pulling some of each buy-in into a pool to use for the special pay-outs. One example of this format is the PokerStars Spin&Go. See also Jackpot Sit and Go.
Range – A set of possible hands that a poker player might hold, given the action in a hand up to this point. Range as a quantifiable concept first appeared around the first big poker boom, and is now integrated into all theory and hand history discussions. This is in stark contrast to older seat-of-the-pants poker thinking, where players would attempt to put their opponents on nearly a specific hand. To that point, in November of 2008, Cole South and Tri Nguyen published a book called Let There Be Range, which codified the whole principle of playing against a range. They charged $1,500 for it. At the time, if you were able to understand and implement the concepts in it, it was probably excellent value at that price.
Range advantage – At any point in a heads-up poker hand, one of the two players has a stronger theoretical range, based on all the actions taken up until then. That player is able to do more betting, and put their opponent in more difficult situations.
Range bet – A situation where you are betting your entire range, whatever that is. Usage: “Suppose UTG opens, BB calls, and the flop comes rainbow. The solver bets 89% of its range here, but you can range bet and not really go wrong.”
Rank – The number or letter on a playing card, as opposed to its suit. The ranks of the cards are two through 10, then jack, queen, king, and ace. Ranks are typically shown as single numbers or letters, with a single letter for the suit. So "4s" is the four of spades and "Th" is the 10 of hearts.
Razz – A form of seven-card stud, in which the low hand wins. So the nuts in Razz is . Suits don’t matter.
Read – (verb) In live poker, to develop an understanding of what a poker opponent is up to, so that you may correctly exploit it. Usage: “His bet was just too small, and I read him for weakness.” (noun) The information that you have from the process of reading an opponent. Nobody describes it better than Teddy KGB.
Real Time Assistance – RTA for short. An online poker cheating method in which a player uses charts or software to give them guidance, or even direct instruction, about how to play each step of a hand. Modern computer technology and solvers make it possible for a cheater to play nearly pefect poker, and thus RTA presents an existential threat to online poker.
Rebuy – To buy back into a tournament after busting out. Contrast with re-entry. In a rebuy tournament, if you bust out, you can purchase a new stack of chips, and never surrender your current seat. In a re-entry tournament, you go through the entire registration process again and are treated as a new player, with a new seat assignment.
Reciprocality – In a poker context, the idea that theoretical money moves between two players when they play an identical situation differently. Tommy Angelo first discussed it in his book Elements of Poker. For example: suppose Nikki and Caitlin get into a pot, and play it out to its conclusion. Now, consider a thought experiment where the exact same cards are dealt, and appear on the board, but the two people (unknowingly) have switched chairs. Suppose that, in the real world, Nikki calls Caitlin’s value bet on the river, but in the alternate universe, Caitin folds the river, and avoids paying off Nikki’s last bet. Caitlin has won this particular reciprocality battle, and theoretical dollars move from Nikki to Caitlin. Reciprocality extends to all aspects of poker, including bankroll management, and the amount of sleep you get.
Rec(reational) player – A player who is not a regular (or reg). Usually, somebody who is unlikely to be a long-term winner at poker. But there are serious recs, and profitable recs – people who don’t play all the time, but take the game seriously, study it some, and might even be long-term winners. The lines between rec and reg are ill-defined and blurry. Furthermore, a person may move across the line depending on their phase of life. Importantly, recs are now seen as crucial to poker’s survival, and both poker operators and the reg/pro community understands that without recreational players, poker dies.
Red line – A graph indicating how much money has been won (or lost) in pots that didn’t go to showdown. The term originated with tracking/HUD software such as PokerTracker, and is now in common use. Aggressive players are fond of saying, “Ya, I red-lined them to death,” meaning that their opponents kept folding to their aggression, which would be reflected in a strong red line. Contrast with blue line.
Re-entry – To buy back into a tournament after busting out. Re-entry tournaments have virtually eliminated their predecessor – rebuy tournaments. In a rebuy tournament, you stay in your seat, and pay another buy-in. In a re-entry tournament, you go back through the registration process and are treated as a new player in the tournament. Re-entry tournaments have not only supplanted rebuy tournaments, but are now far more common than freeze-outs. Re-entry tournaments create larger prize pools, and allow players the chance to fire multiple bullets, hoping to recover the cost of all the failed ones.
Reg(ular) player – Somebody who plays a lot of poker. There is some connotation that the person is a winning player, or at least break-even, but that’s not necessarily the case. Thus the term 'bad reg', meaning somebody who plays poker a lot (or “all the time”) but still loses at the game. Contrast with rec.
Regulated market – An online or live poker market in which the operators (be they online poker sites or brick-and-mortar enterprises) are regulated by a state or other governmental authority, for instance, the Nevada Gaming Commission or the California Department of Justice. Conversely, a gray market enterprise, online or live, is operating outside of any governmental regulation. Obviously, that carries more risk for its customers.
Replayer – A software application that takes a hand history file as input, and presents it graphically, allowing the user to step through the hand, and review their or others’ play.
Represent – To play as if you have a particularly strong hand or strong range of hands. Usage: “When the third spade came on the turn and he bet, I raised, representing the flush.” Also rep, as in, “I wanted to bluff, but I wouldn’t be repping much.”
Re-raise – To raise an initial raiser. This term is deprecated because it doesn’t include any information about how many raises have taken place (unless you resort to mind-numbing 're-re-re-raise' terminology). Modern vocabulary is raise for the first raise over a bet, then 3-bet (the first raise is the 2-bet), 4-bet, and so on.
Resulting – The act of interpreting poker actions based on the outcome of the hand. Usage: “I should have jammed my kings preflop, then he couldn’t have called with pocket sevens and flopped a set.” “You’re just resulting. Jamming kings pre would have been a giant punt.” Humans are notoriously results-oriented – our DNA is wired to learn from past experiences. But to win at poker, you must learn to make the best decision given the information you have at the moment. The cards may or may not cooperate, but how the cards fall doesn’t influence the correct decision. This is one of the things that makes poker such an excellent life-learning tool, since it constantly reinforces good decision-making, rather than focus on uncontrollable outcomes.
Reverse Implied Odds – The flip side of implied odds. The concept that if you make the hand you are drawing to, it may only cost you more money. Usage: “Calling large bets preflop with small pocket pairs often has reverse implied odds. Too often, when you hit your set, you run into a bigger set, and get stacked.”
Riffle – (a) A shuffling technique where the deck is cut in half, and the cards in one half are interlaced with the cards in the other half. (b) A common action used by players while thinking - and often when not - where two stacks of chips are interlaced with one hand to create one larger stack.
Rigged – A system of myths, conspiracy theories, and logically twisted falsehoods about the nature of online poker. The base assertion is that “Online poker is rigged.” Exactly for whom, or why, is rarely clear. The claims include, but are not limited to: Action flops designed to create more betting and raising, thus increasing rake. Preferential outcomes to favored players and/or bots managed by the site. Cashout curse – a punishment for withdrawing money. But no, online poker is not rigged. Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the conspiracy believers is that they continue to play the very game that they claim is rigged. Indeed, online poker is alive and well.
Ring game – Another name for a cash game, as opposed to a tournament.
River – The last card dealt in any poker game. In flop games with traditional five card boards, the river is the fifth board card put out, and is also known as Fifth street. In seven-card stud games, the river is the seventh card dealt to each player. For unknown reasons, stud players will refer to streets third to sixth, but always refer to the last card as the river. You never hear seventh street.
Rock – (a) A token (e.g. two chips taped together) to indicate a forced straddle by the winner of the pot in any poker game. This means that the straddle is always on, and the rock acts as the indicator of who has the straddle that hand. (b) A player who doesn’t splash around in pots, who plays conservatively, and almost always “has it” when they bet. There may be a subtle semantic difference between rock and nit, that the nit is even more risk-averse and unwilling to gamble. But such subtleties are lost on most poker players. See also OMC.
Roll – (a) Short for bankroll. Often used as a verb or adjective. Usage: “I wanted to play the $5/10 game, but I’m not rolled for it.” (b) To generate a random number when choosing between two or more actions, as part of a mixed strategy, typically when playing live. Players will use a watch’s second hand, chip clock position, or even a phone app to generate a random number, and then make their decision based on that. Though in many cases, the random decision generated has to pass through the player’s “What I want to do” filter. Usage: “I decided it was 7:3 in favor of folding – I rolled a fold. ”Note: if you ever see somebody using a D&D die to roll their decisions at the table, this is a creative and clever poker player – tread carefully.
Rolled up – In any seven-card stud game, to start with trips. Usage: “I started with rolled-up eights, and it just got better from there.”
Rounder – (a) A poker player or gambler who rounds a region, state, or the entire country (or planet), looking for profitable gambling opportunities. Legendary poker players Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, and Sailor Roberts rounded the Texas poker circuit for many years. (b) Rounders, a 1998 movie by director John Dahl, launched the poker careers of innumerable teenaged and early-20s young men and women, five years before the Moneymaker boom. It is, more than a quarter century on, one of the few movies to accurately portray poker, particularly no-limit hold’em. Lines from the movie are now embedded in the collective poker consciousness, and are unabashedly quoted, with simply a smile of acknowledgment from others at the table. For instance: “I’m just thinking about Vegas and the f*cking Mirage.” “And in my club, I will splash the pot whenever, the f*ck, I please.” “Let’s play some cards.” “He beat me. Straight up. Pay him. Pay that man his money.”
Royal flush – A straight flush, 10 to ace. While royal flushes sometimes get their own entry in hand ranking charts, a royal flush is no different from any other straight flush, in the sense of rarity, which is how poker hands are ranked. See also steel wheel. Also, if you see a royal flush in a movie or TV show, you can leave the movie, or turn off the show – they didn’t get the poker right. Royal flushes are absurdly rare, so any plot device including one is likely to be tortured at best.
Run it twice – The option to run out a portion or all of the board twice in a flop game. The pot is effectively split in two, and the winner of each run-out gets half the pot. If one player wins both run-outs, they scoop the pot.
Runner – (a) A player in a poker tournament. Usage: “The event was wildly successful, with over 800 runners.” (b) A sequence, particularly in flop games, of two or more cards which produce an unexpected result. Also, Runner-runner. Usage: “Her out-flopped me with two pair on the board, but it came running sevens, so my aces-up won.”
Run-out – The process of dealing the remaining board cards in a flop game. Usage: “With top-pair-top-kicker, you can bet three streets for value if you get a good run-out.”

S

Satellite – A tournament that doesn’t award cash prizes, but instead one or more seats in another, larger buy-in, tournament. Satellites were first created sometime around 1982 by Eric Drache, the tournament director for the WSOP. Since then, they have become wildly popular. Super satellites are multi-table tournaments that award multiple seats based on the total prize pool. For instance, the WSOP routinely runs $200 super satellites to the Main Event, awarding one seat for each 50 entries. Such satellites may award a dozen or more seats.
Scare card – A card, typically in a flop game, that could easily change the best hand. For instance, suppose there are two diamonds on the flop in a hold’em game, and there is a lot of betting. Now a third diamond appears on the turn, making a flush possible. This is a canonical scare card. Contrast with brick.
Scoop – To win a pot. “She rivered the top full house and scooped in a monster.” Most typically, the term is used to describe winning both halves of a pot, either in a split pot game, or as the outcome of running a board twice. Usage: “LaurieAnn already had the nut flush on the top board, and then binked a gutshot on the bottom to scoop the whole enchilada.” Such sentences are commonplace in the poker world, which explains why civilians don’t want to be around poker players at parties.
Second pair – A pair which is below the current top pair on the board, but above any other possible pairs on the board. For instance, if the flop is in a hold’em game, a player holding would have second pair, with an overcard. While used less, you could also say that a player holding pocket nines in this situation has second pair. It is true that this hand is losing to anybody holding a king in their hand. However, the pocket nines are ahead of any player holding just an eight, so second pair undersells the strength of their hand.
See – An old, colloquial way of announcing that you are calling a bet. Imagine an old cowboy movie where the sharp says, “I’ll see that $20, and raise you another $50.” Don’t do this, because it’s a string bet. And because it tells the entire table that your understanding of poker is limited to watching The Sting 25 times.
Semi-bluff – A bet or raise with a hand that is unlikely to be best right now, but could improve to the best hand with subsequent cards. The idea is that you may win the pot immediately by making your opponent fold. If that doesn’t work, then you have your draw to fall back on. A properly executed semi-bluff needs to have sufficient fold equity that the likelihood of winning the pot immediately, in addition to the likelihood of hitting the draw, adds up to a profitable wager.
Session – A single unit of poker playing time (usually in a cash game), from when the player sits down at the table, to when they cash out. While a session can be any length, they are typically three or five hours, but a hit-and-run can be executed in a matter of minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, sessions can run around the clock for 24 hours or more. The current world record is a mind-numbing five days.
Set – Three of a kind, but almost always used to indicate the specific combination of a pocket pair plus a third card of the same rank on the board in a flop game. Sets have a special place in the hearts of poker players, because they’re extremely powerful, but also well hidden. The seemingly innocuous on the flop means nothing to anybody at the table, except to the player holding a pair of sevens in their hand. A good way to give yourself away as a newbie is to show down a single seven when there are two other sevens on the board and say, “I have a set.” This type of three of a kind would be more commonly known as trips.
Shark – A player who has excellent skills and is likely to be profitable in a poker game. See also, sharp. This usage is so common that the shark has become the icon of a popular poker training site. Contrary to some traditionalists’ opinions, both card sharp and card shark have long histories of common usage.
Sharp (or Card sharp) – Traditionally, a person who cheated at cards to gain an unfair advantage. More recently, it has included those who simply understand a game or investment situation better than others. Usage: “There are too many sharps in that game – I’m going to go see a movie.” Or, “In this market, the sharps are buying condos and waiting for interest rates to come down.” Often interchangeable with card shark.
Short stack – (noun) A stack of chips that is small relative to the other stacks at the table. This is particularly relevant in tournaments, where the presence of one or more short stacks completely changes correct strategy. (verb) To play a short stack. Usage: “I only had 10 bigs, but I short stacked like a boss, and laddered right up to the final table.”
Short the pot – A cheating technique in which the cheater puts fewer chips into the pot than they’re supposed to. That’s why players put their bets out in front of them, to be swept into the pot by the dealer, rather than toss them into the pot, as you see on TV shows. See also splash the pot.
Shove – Another aggressive word meaning to go all-in. See jam.
Showdown – The point in a poker hand where the players remaining in the hand show down their cards, and the pot is awarded to the best hand. One of the key aspects of poker is that not all hands reach showdown, because if all players but one fold, the hand is over without a showdown (unless somebody makes a serious sixth street error). Research by online poker site PokerStars during the early 2000s indicated that as many as 75% of no-limit hold’em hands end without a showdown. In the words of legendary gambler Sammy Farha: “The person who bets the most wins – we just use the cards to settle ties.”
Showdown value – The chance that a hand will be the winner when shown down at the end of the hand. This is rarely a quantifiable value, but a qualitative sense that the hand might be good. Usage: “I thought about bluffing the river, but decided my ace-queen had some showdown value, so I checked back.”
Shuffler – A machine which automatically shuffles the cards. Professional quality shuffling machines cost five figures and use RNGs to generate a deck order, rather than physically shuffling the cards. Such shufflers are worth many times their cost, because they speed up the game and generate more rake. Ironically, despite automatic shufflers being ubiquitous in casino poker rooms, many players still blame the dealer for bad beats and/or bad cards. As long as such players exist, poker will never die.
Shut down – To cease betting, usually because you were bluffing, and decided that the bluff wasn’t going to succeed. Usage: “John bet the flop and turn with the flush draw, but decided to shut down on the river.”
Side pot – A pot which is created apart from the main pot because a player is all-in but two or more players still have chips behind. It is possible to have multiple side pots, and the mechanics can get complex in live poker. When a side pot is created in a live game, the dealer will say, “Betting is now on the side.”
Sit-and-go – Also called SNG. A tournament that isn’t scheduled, but simply runs when enough players show up to start it. The genre was created in online poker, as a one-table tournament. Players would click into any available seat, and when the table was full, the tournament would start. SNGs have now expanded to multi-table formats, but still with the “start it when they come” mechanic. Single table SNGs are now a feature of some live tournament festivals.
Site – An online poker operator. Usage: “The tournament fields on that site are absurdly soft.”
Sklansky bucks – Also Sklansky$. Theoretical dollars that are won by making a +EV play in a poker game. For instance, suppose Thomas and Ryan get all-in preflop in a no-limit hold’em game, for $1,000 each. Thomas has pocket aces, and Ryan has pocket kings. Thomas immediately wins 620 Sklansky$, as he has an 81% chance of winning a $2,000 pot. To calculate Sklansky$, multiple the equity at the time the money went in (in this example, Thomas has 81%), multiply this by the total size of the pot (= 1620) and subtract the final bet (1000) = 620. In the real world, he will either win $1,000 or lose $1,000, but the Sklansky$ are a metric of how good a gamble he took. The concept was invented by early poker theorist David Sklansky. Sklansky$ is a term typically used by people who came out on the wrong end of a good wager.
Slow play – To play a strong hand in a way to disguise its strength until later in the hand. Usage: “I flopped middle set, but she was super aggressive, so when she bet, I just flatted as a slow play.” Poker players love to slow play strong hands, because it allows them to be tricky and trappy, despite slow playing rarely being the best strategy. But for many it’s more important to surprise and shock your opponent than maximize your profit.
Slow roll – To wait while another player exposes their cards at showdown, and then pause long enough to make that player believe they have the winning hand. Then the slow-roller turns up a superior hand. Slow rolling is the most egregious of poker etiquette violations, and causes more ill-will and negative energy than any combination of other party fouls.
Small blind – (a) In any game with blinds, the smaller of the two (or more) blinds. The small blind is always posted in the position immediately to the left of the button. (b) The player sitting in the small blind position.
Snap – Any action taken without hesitation. If used as a verb rather than an adjective, it means snap-call. Usage: “I bet full pot with my nut flush and they snapped. Which means I coulda gone B150 and gotten more. FML.” Snap is also part of a key poker phrase: “Fade the snap call.” That is, when you bet a strong, but non-nut hand, particularly all-in, and hoping for a call, but think if your opponent snap calls, or beats you into the pot, you’re probably toast. But if there’s a pause while your opponent considers a call, you almost certainly have the best hand. Thus it’s vital to “fade the snap call.” Snap can also be used IRL, meaning to agree to something without hesitation. Usage: “We’re headed to Pismo Beach tomorrow for sun, surf, and oysters. You in?” “Snap.” Note that this is distinctly different from the IRL phrase, “Oh, snap.”
Snipe – A form of cheating in which a cheater sees a streamer’s hole cards, and then plays against the streamer using that information. Streamers inject delay into their streams to prevent sniping, but if a single hand takes a particularly long time, it’s possible for the delayed hole card information to appear in public while the hand is still ongoing. There are also (rare) cases where the same thing could happen in a live-streamed game. If there’s a danger of this, the live stream organizers have to kill the stream, force the action along, or otherwise ensure that nobody will be able to see any player’s cards during the hand.
Soft – A cash game table or tournament field with weak opponents. Usage: Patti: “That game looked pretty good. Was it soft?” Chuck: “Soft? It was a marshmallow pit.” Patti: “Good to hear. How much did you lose?”
Soft-play – To not attempt to extract the maximum number of chips from an opponent in a hand. This may be because the two players involved know and/or like each other and simply don’t want to take each other’s money. This is mostly fine in a cash game, because the other players at the table have no interest in the outcome of a hand in which they’re not involved. However, in a tournament, soft-playing is literally cheating, because the outcome of a hand between two players affects all players at the table. For that reason, soft-playing is a rules violation in the TDA rules.
Solver – A software application which calculates the 'best' possible play in a poker game. When a solver plays against a copy of itself, the best strategy ultimately approximates a Nash equilibrium. Solvers have completely changed the nature of poker and poker training. Prior to solvers, there was a belief that there were many 'correct' approaches to poker, largely depending on one’s 'style.' Solvers have shown that, at least theoretically, there are 'right' and 'wrong' ways to play the game. In-depth discussion of solvers is far beyond the scope of this document, but you can start with this article that describes how solvers work, and this fascinating piece about the history of poker solvers.
Splash around – To play in a way which seems somewhat random, and not particularly concerned about profit or loss. Indeed, fun players often like to splash around, and see what happens. Note that splashing around is a perfectly delightful approach to poker, and anybody who suggests it’s not is missing the entire point that poker is allowed to be fun.
Splash the pot – To toss chips directly into the pot. What you see in the movies and TV notwithstanding, this is a violation of both good poker etiquette and poker rules, because it’s far too easy to short the pot. See Rounders for one of the all-time great uses of the phrase. There is also a type of poker room promotion called a splash pot. In such a promotion, an employee literally splashes the pot of a particular hand with extra chips. Depending on the value of those extra chips relative to the normal size of pots in the game, splash pots can get quite out of hand.
Split pot – Any form of poker in which the pot is split between two or more players. Typical formats are high-low 8-or-better, in which the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand, and double board, in which the pot is split between the winners of each board. Note that if one player wins both halves of the pot (however the pot is split) then they scoop the entire thing. Scooping pots is 85% of correct strategy in any split pot game. Conversely, players who routinely chase half the pot are doomed to failure.
Spot – A specific decision point in a poker hand. With the increased focus on poker theory and GTO, players are more aware of the nuances around each decision point in the game, so they talk about a spot – a particular point in a hand where the player must decide what next action to take. For extra credit in nerdy gatherings, you can freely substitute the word node for spot.
Stable – A collection of horses, who all have some backing arrangement with a single backer or group of backers. Such arrangements start down a slippery slope, since the backers potentially have an interest in the results of multiple players at a table, creating incentives for soft play and/or collusion. Because of poker players’ mercurial nature, particularly those who are being backed, the poker phrase 'stable stable' is likely an oxymoron.
Stack – (noun) The collection of chips in front of a poker player. Traditionally, poker chips are arranged in stacks of 20, all of identical denomination. This simplifies counting, cash-out, etc. Notably, all chip racks are designed to hold five stacks of 20 chips. That said, many players have random towers, castles, and moats of chips. This makes it difficult for other players to determine how many chips they actually have, and slows the game whenever one player demands a count of another’s stack. (verb) To win a player’s entire stack from them. Usage: “Jaman made the king-high flush, I made the queen-high flush, and he stacked me. FML.”
Stack to pot ratio – Also SPR. The ratio between the remaining effective stack and the current size of the pot. This ratio heavily influences correct strategy for the players in the pot. For example, suppose Lily has $900 and Vanessa has $800. The pot is currently $200. The effective stack is Vanessa’s $800, and the SPR is 800/200 = 4.0.
Stakes – The monetary size of a cash game or tournament. For cash games, this is typically described by the size of the blinds, e.g. $2/5 NLH, meaning a no-limit hold’em game with a $2 small blind and $5 big blind. For tournaments, it’s simply the buy-in amount, e.g. $220 NLH.
Stand-up game – A carnival game in which all players must stand up. Whenever a person wins a pot, they get to sit down. The last player standing must pay a predetermined bounty to all other players at the table. This game is also called the nit game, because as the number of people standing goes down, players are forced to play more hands, and play them aggressively, lest they lose the game and forfeit all the bounties. This makes nits miserable. The game has become sufficiently popular that it is now frequently played with buttons indicating who has won a pot and who hasn’t. This obviates the need for actually standing up, which could easily lead to exercise.
Static board – A board on which the best hand is unlikely to change as further cards come out. As an extreme example, consider a flop of . At this point, whoever has the best hand right now is likely to have the best hand when the river comes out. If a player has the case nine, they will almost certainly win the pot. Even a high pair, such as a pair of jacks, is unlikely to be beaten by subsequent cards. Contrast with dynamic board.
Steel wheel – An ace-to-five straight flush.
Stop-and-go – A betting line in which an out-of-position player calls a bet, but then leads out on the next street. This used to be considered unorthodox play and reserved for unusual circumstances. Solvers have shown that such a line is frequently correct, and the phrase is largely deprecated.
Straddle – An extra blind posted by a player (usually in the under-the-gun position) which is twice the value of the big blind. This doubles the stakes of the game for this one hand. Sometimes straddles become 'standard' in a game, and there is consensus that the straddle will be on constantly. This effectively doubles the published stakes of the game. For instance, a $2/5 no-limit hold’em game that always has a straddle on is effectively a $5/10 game. See also, Mississippi straddle and rock.
Straight – (a) Five cards in successive rank order. E.g. , , , of any combination of suits. An ace-to-five straight is referred to as a wheel, and a ten-ace straight is referred to as Broadway. (b) The total amount of a bet. This phrase is sometimes used to clarify whether a raise is by an amount, or to an amount. For instance, suppose Conrad bets $100, and then Landon says “Raise… $350.” The dealer may say, “Is that $350 more or $350 straight?”
Straight flush – A straight in which all the cards are of the same suit. Such hands are extremely rare – the probability of being dealt five random cards which are a straight flush is 0.0015%. Despite this, from watching poker on TV and in the movies, you’d think they appear once an hour.
Streamer – A person who plays poker online, and streams their play on a platform such as Twitch. That is, people tune into a Twitch channel, and watch the streamer play poker at some online site, while describing their actions and chatting with the viewers. Streamers always delay their stream by a few minutes so nobody can see their cards in real-time and snipe them. This is analogous to the delay that live stream games put into their broadcast. While the origin story of poker vlogging is a bit muddy, with a small handful of evolutionary starting points, there was a single Big Bang of poker streaming – Jason (JCarver) Somerville. Somerville began streaming real money poker on Twitch in the fall of 2014. Under the brand Run It Up, Somerville streamed from his self-labeled 'dirty basement,' sometimes for two weeks straight without taking a day off.
Stream game – A poker game which is live-streamed with a delay on the Internet. This is in contrast to 'produced' game shows, such as Poker After Dark, which record the game, and then create a show of highlights in post-production. In a stream game, they turn on the camera, and then start dealing. Such streams may run four or more hours. One of the prototypical stream games was Live at the Bike.
Street – (a) A single round of betting. A strict algorithmic definition is that a betting street begins with the first player to act, and ends when all players remaining in the hand have had the opportunity to act on the most recent bet or raise. (b) To play poker based on intuition and experience, rather than theory. Usage: “The cutoff opens to $60 – in a $5/10 game – I 3-bet to $200 with queens on the button. Now the small blind cold calls, and cutoff calls too. So much for the solver – we’re playing street poker.” (c) 'In the streets' means to be in action. Usage: “My goodness Tom, I didn’t expect to see you in the PLO streets.”
String bet – An illegal bet, in which a player brings some chips forward, but then goes back and bets more chips. String bets aren’t permitted, and in the above circumstance, only the chips brought forward in the original motion count as the bet. A player can prevent the whole problem simply by announcing the amount of their bet. Once they’ve done that, they are committed to that specific bet size, no matter how the chips are brought out. TV shows and movies routinely traffic in string bets, and nobody seems to notice. But don’t try it in a casino or serious home game.
Strip – A shuffling technique in which the top and bottom of the deck is gripped in one hand, while the other hand pulls a slug of cards out from the center, and places it on top.
Stuck – Losing in a poker game, session, or any given time period. Usage: “I hadn’t been at the table more than an hour and was already stuck three buy-ins.” “Summers are long. I’ve cashed five events at the WSOP, but I’m still stuck $14K for the series.” See also, Up-stuck.
Stud poker – A form of poker in which players get a combination of up cards and down cards. All modern versions of stud are played with seven cards, with the third to sixth cards being face up. It may be reasonably argued that straight seven-card stud high, as played in the US, is the single most boring existing version of poker. However, seven-card stud played high-low eight-or-better is an excellent game. Also, if seven-card is still played in Europe, it will be an excellent game, since Europeans eschew fixed-limit betting, and play even stud, with its five betting rounds, pot-limit. Thus the pots will reach absurd sizes, and offer myriad massive bluffing opportunities. Such a game could never be boring. Prior to the Moneymaker boom, seven-card stud and its variants (such as Baseball, Follow the Queen, and Chicago) were the most popular form of poker in most home games. Stud may still be common in retirement homes.
Suit – The divisions of a deck of playing cards including clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. Contrast with rank.
Suited – Two or more cards of the same suit. Normally used to describe a hold’em hand of two different ranks, e.g. nine-eight suited. Contrast with offsuit.
Sweat – (a) To have an interest (financial or not) in a poker player’s results, usually in a tournament. Usage: “I bought a piece of him in the WSOP Main. I think he’s -EV, but it gives me a sweat when I can’t be there myself, so it’s worth it." (b) To physically watch another person playing. Usage: “Aleeyah’s boyfriend wanted to learn about poker, so the other players were happy enough to let him sit behind her and sweat her.”

T

Table – To place your cards face-up on the poker table. Usage: “He mucked as soon as I tabled my hand.” Tabling a hand crosses a bright line in poker protocol: until the hand has been tabled, it has no standing to be awarded the pot. Once it has been tabled, it is protected by the dealer and other players at the table. For that reason, only newbies and rude poker players wave their hand around in front of them at showdown rather than simply tabling it.
Table stakes – A rule enforced in all poker games that a player may win from any other player at the table only an amount equal to or less than the amount that the player started the hand with. Similarly, the player can lose no more than that amount. For example, suppose Maria starts a poker hand with $1,500 in front of her. If, by any point in the hand, she has wagered the entire $1,500, she is all-in and can’t take money from her pocket to bet further on that specific hand. Also, she can only lose the $1,500 – under no circumstances can she lose more on that hand. Poker games presented in the movies and on TV routinely violate table stakes rules, including The Sting and Big Hand for the Little Lady. As a corollary, a player may not remove chips from the table once they have bought or won them. Doing so is called going south, and is a violation of almost all poker room policies.
Tank – (verb) To ponder a poker decision for a period of time. Usage: “Joe’s overbet really stumped her, and she tanked for almost a full minute.” (noun) Where you are while you’re tanking. This has a connotation of being confused and unsure about the spot you’re in. Usage: “Mellissa’s check/shove had him completely in the tank.”
Target – When betting, an inferior range which you hope will call your value bet. Usage: “With top pair, top kicker, Miguel bet 75% of the pot on the river, targeting worse top pairs." There is also the analogous concept of a bluff target. A bluff target is a range of better hands that you anticipate will fold to your bet.
TDA – Acronym for Tournament Directors Association. An organization formed in 2001 to promote standardization of poker tournament rules. The TDA has been extraordinarily successful, and the TDA Rules are now the standard for most tournaments in the United States. Usage: Floorman is called to the table to resolve a dispute. “I’m not sure of the correct ruling – let me check TDA.”
Tell – Short for telegraph. A physical or other hint that gives away information about the strength of a player’s hand. Many Americans probably learned the term from the scene in the movie Rounders. After that exchange, the character Mike McDermott says (in voiceover), “The rule is this: you spot a man's tell, you don't say a ******* word.” This is excellent advice.
Thin – A value bet in which the range you’re targeting is only a hair worse than your actual hand, so you are in danger of value owning yourself. Usage: “Yeah, I bet $50 on the river with top pair of kings, jack kicker. It mighta been a little thin, but he paid off with , so yay me.”
Three of a kind – Three cards of the same rank. In traditional poker hand rankings, three of a kind (or trips) beats all two-pair hands, and is beaten by all straights. In flop games, a set is a specific subset of three of a kind, in which the player holds two of the rank in their hand, and there is a third card of the same rank on the board.
Tight – A person who plays relatively few hands, choosing to fold almost everything they’re dealt. Ironically, accusing a player of playing tight is usually said as an insult, but profitable play demands careful selection of one’s starting hands. As long as “You play too tight” is considered an invective, poker will never die.
Tilt – Taken from the pinball world, in which a machine stops working if it’s physically tilted (to cheat), tilt is ubiquitous in the world of poker. To tilt is to lose your emotional and/or mental balance, usually with the implication of punting off piles of chips at the poker table. There are uncountable varieties of tilt, and it presents in myriad ways. Famed poker author Tommy Angelo describes tilt thus: “Tilt is anything less than your utmost. Tilt is suboptimalness. Defining tilt in this way, everyone tilts. It's just a matter of how often, how long, and how bad.” There are many people who play poker sufficiently well to be pros or profitable recs, but tilt costs them all their profits, and then some. As long as there is tilt, there will be poker.
Time – A statement by a player to request a little bit of extra time to make a decision. Usage: “Time, please.” Ironically, limit players are far more likely to make this polite request. No-limit hold’em players consider it their birthright to tank until the cows come home, or somebody calls a clock on them, which will probably happen after the cows come home.
Time game – A cash game in which no rake is taken, but the players are charged a flat fee, usually every half hour. Time games are typically more cost-efficient for the players, and are reserved for higher stakes games. Also, in some markets, taking a rake crosses a bright legal line, and thus all public poker games are time games.
To go – The current bet amount, which any player must call to continue in the hand. Usage: “We’ve got a raise here – it’s now $75 to go.” Also Straight (e.g. “$75 straight”) or (rarely) “All day” (“$75 all day”).
Toke – Short for token. A tip given to a dealer or other poker room employee. In most American poker rooms, dealers make a large percentage of their income from tokes. Like any tip-based economy, it creates unpredictability in the dealer’s income, and an unfair hidden tax on the players. The situation is even worse than that of a (e.g.) restaurant server. A poker dealer is tasked with enforcing the protocol and etiquette of the game, and must correct or even admonish the very people from whom they’re hoping to get tokes. All poker players who are ladies or gentlemen err on the side of generosity with their tokes.
Top and bottom – Two pair, consisting of the highest and lowest card on the board. For instance, on a flop, a player holding king-three in their hand would have top and bottom.
Top pair – A pair made with the highest card on the board. For instance, if the final board in a hold’em hand is , a player holding queen-jack would have top pair, with a jack kicker.
Top set – A set made with the top card on the board. For example, if, on the turn, the board is , a player holding pocket jacks has top set.
Top two – Two pair made with the highest two cards on the board. For instance, if the board in a hold’em game is , a player with has top two pair.
Top up – To purchase more chips in a cash game. This may mean to purchase enough chips to reach the buy-in cap. Usage: “I had lost a couple of pots so I topped up to $1,000.”
Tournament – A poker game in which the blinds continually increase over time, and play continues until a single person has won all the chips. Tournaments use special chips which have no cash value, and tournament players can’t cash their chips out, as they could in a cash game. They must continue playing until they have won all the chips, or bust out. Tournaments are wildly popular, because they provide an opportunity for a person to get a huge return on their initial investment, even though about 85% of the people who enter a tournament will leave it empty-handed. The scope and variety of poker tournaments is far beyond the scope of this document, but books such as The Biggest Bluff and Positively Fifth Street give excellent insight into their nature. See also Satellite, Bounty, and WSOP.
Tournament clock – A clock or software application which tracks the progression of a tournament, specifically to indicate when the blinds go up. Because of cheap technology, almost all tournaments now use some software application, such as Table Captain or Tournament Director. Such applications show the current blinds, what the next blind level will be, the number of players remaining in the tournament, and other vital information.
Tournament director (TD) – A person who is responsible for the management of a tournament. The TD is the single most important person in any tournament, and has ultimate authority over all floor decisions and any other issue or conflict that arises. In 2001, a handful of forward-thinking TDs got together and created the Tournament Directors Association. This has been the only successful organization of people in the poker community, because it is easier to herd cats than poker players.
Tournament fee – The fee that a poker tournament organizer takes for the service of running the event. Sometimes the fee is explicitly noted in the buy-in, such as $1,000 + $80, meaning that the players buy in for $1,080 - $1,000 goes into the prize pool, and $80 goes to the organizer. Sometimes the same tournament is described as a $1,080 buy-in, and the players must read the fine print to see how much fee is being taken.
Toy game – A poker game which has been reduced in complexity to the point that nobody would want to actually play it, but such a game can provide valuable insight into correct strategy in real poker games. One of the best known toy games is the ace-king-queen game.
TPTK – Acronym for Top Pair Top Kicker in hold’em. For instance, if you have ace-jack, and the flop is , you have TPTK. If this seems like a particularly niche shorthand, it is. However, “Top pair, top kicker” plays an outsize role in hold’em, because it’s often the dividing line between extremely strong hands and marginal ones. Thus many hand histories and tank times are devoted to TPTK, one way or another. Top pair, second kicker is sometimes written TP2K.
Triple barrel – To bet on all three post-flop streets, as a bluff. Such bluffs are obviously high variance, and require steely nerve on the part of the bluffer, and steely nerve on the part of their opponent, to call down. The triple barrel bluff is rare, but its sheer chutzpah makes it punch well above its weight class in the poker consciousness.
Triple draw – A form of draw poker in which players have up to three opportunities to draw to improve their hand. Badugi and Deuce-to-seven are typically played in a triple-draw format.
Trips – Another name for Three of a kind.
Turn – The fourth community card put out in flop games. Also known as fourth street.
Two pair – A poker hand consisting of two distinct pairs of cards, such as , which would be called, nines and fives with an ace kicker. Two-pair hands beat all one-pair hands, and are beaten by all trips. For unknown reasons, no poker player, anywhere, says, “Two pairs,” which is clearly grammatically correct. If you say, “Two pairs,” you are immediately marked as a poker newbie. Two-pair hands are described and ranked either by the higher of the two pair (kings-up), or by both pairs, (kings over threes). If you turn over quads and say, “Two pair,” you are immediately marked as a jerk.

U

Under the gun – (a) The position one to the left of the big blind and, importantly, the first player to act before the flop in flop games. Also UTG. (b) The player in the UTG position. Usage: “UTG opened to $25.”
Underdog – A person who is not favored to win a particular wager. Also Dog. Usage: “James and Joe got piles in preflop, and when the cards went on their backs, it turned out that James had QQ and Joe had JJ, so Joe was a 4:1 dog.”
Underground game – A live poker game played not in a casino or other regulated or even gray market venue. Underground games are notorious for extortionate rake, shady characters, potential cheating, and an environment conducive to trouble and tragedy. At an underground game, if people come through the door with guns, you’re hoping it’s the police. And even then, awful things can happen.
Unique – A player in a poker tournament (also runner), distinguished from the number of buy-ins, re-buys, and re-entries the tournament had. E.g. “That event had 542 uniques, with a total of 860 buy-ins.”
Up card – In stud games, a card that is seen by all players. For instance, in seven-card stud, each player is dealt two down cards, and then third street (the third card to each player) is dealt face-up (i.e. an up card).
Up-stuck – The state of being ahead in a game, session, or tournament, but below your high-water mark. Being up-stuck can lead to raging tilt, causing the player to go from up-stuck to plain vanilla stuck. Usage: “I had 180K chips, then some fish called me down with third pair, even though I fired two barrels. I started the day with 100K, and have 120K right now, but I’m up-stuck and angry.” This sort of behavior appears throughout the animal kingdom. For instance, if you give a monkey a mango, they’re happy. If you give a monkey two mangoes, but then take one away, they’re angry. Draw parallels as you see fit.

V

Value – A qualitative measure of how strong a poker hand is at any given stage of a pot.
Value bet – A bet which the bettor believes can be called by an inferior hand. Contrast with a bluff, with which the bettor is hoping to make a superior hand fold. For instance, if Jeanne is playing hold’em and has two pair, she can frequently bet her hand for value, targeting strong one-pair hands.
Value own – To make a value bet, and get called, only to discover that you’ve been called by a better hand. This is used almost exclusively on the river, where the in-position player can check back and see a showdown, or bet. Choosing to bet, rather than check, and being called by a better hand, might seem like a serious mistake. However, the best players routinely value-own themselves – this is because they are always seeking thin value bets. Usage: “She checked to me on the river, so I bet half pot with my pair of kings, ten kicker. She called – turns out she had king-jack, so I value-owned myself.”
Value panic – A situation in which an out-of-position player reaches the river with a strong hand, having played passively up to that point. “Suddenly” realizing that this is their last chance to get value for their hand, and fearful that the in-position player will check back, they fire out a value bet, ignoring the option of checking which would allow the in-position player to bluff or value bet a worse hand.
Value town – A mythical place where you go if you call a value bet. Usage: “She played the hand perfectly, from preflop to the river, and took me on a long, expensive trip to value town.”
Variance – The statistical swings experienced by poker players. Ironically, it is specifically variance which makes poker for real money thrive, because it allows bad players to win in the short term. Contrast this with chess or tennis, where a player will never win a match against a meaningfully superior opponent. A bad poker player can fool themselves into believing that they are a winning player, thanks to the variance inherent in the deck of cards. Conversely, variance causes even the best players to experience catastrophic downswings that cause pain and self-doubt. Only through good bankroll management, tilt control, and persistence, can those players find the far end of the worst of such periods. Thus variance is the best friend and worst enemy of the serious poker player, whether they are a professional, or a for-profit rec. As long as there is variance, poker will not die.
Video poker – Is not poker. Video poker is an electronic game with a fixed house edge, given perfect play.
Vig – Short for vigorish, the edge that the house gives itself in any wager. Because the house doesn’t participate in the actual poker game, the rake or time payment is the vig. For this reason, casino poker is not a zero-sum game, and to beat it you must beat not only your fellow players but the vig, also.
Villain – In a hand history, the player who is the opponent of the hero. This phrase is overly deprecating, and poker would be better if it were replaced with opponent, or simply a reference to the opponent’s position at the table. For instance, “I opened to $35 in the hijack, and only the cutoff called.” From there, the opponent can be referenced as cutoff or CO.
Vlog – A video log recounting somebody’s activities in and around the poker table. The first known poker vlogs began with Trooper97 around 2016. Shortly thereafter, Andrew Neeme and Brad Owen began documenting their own existence as grinders in low- to mid-stakes games in Las Vegas. From there, the genre exploded, as dozens of people began filming their poker play from a first-person shooter perspective. Particularly during the Covid pandemic, poker fans religiously tuned in to watch the few people who were venturing out into the live games that were running. Ultimately, communities formed around the vloggers, and Neeme and Owen, in particular, began hosting gatherings called meet-up games for their fans. Initially, casinos and poker rooms were hostile toward vloggers, and routinely forced them to stop recording, or even ejected the vlogger from the room. Ultimately, they realized that they were being given free publicity, and people were flocking to their rooms for the opportunity to meet and play with their vlogging heroes. Only a benighted poker room manager still throws out vloggers.
VPIP – Acronym for Voluntarily Put (chips) In Pot. The first, most important statistic about how somebody plays poker. At the beginning of any poker hand, a player who is not in the blinds has the option of continuing in the hand, or immediately folding and investing no money. This sets poker apart from pit games such as blackjack, because a blackjack player must place their bet before they receive cards. By voluntarily entering the pot (VPIPing), a player is investing chips in the hand. People whose VPIP is too high are not being selective enough about the hands they play, and a sufficiently high VPIP is enough to mark somebody as a losing player without any further information. If a HUD user could have only one statistic about their opponents, they would likely pick VPIP.

W

Wake up – To discover that you have a strong starting hand. Usage: “I thought my shove was going to get through, but then Francine woke up in the small blind with pocket kings.”
Wash – A shuffling technique in which the dealer spreads the cards face down on the table, and 'washes' them around with both hands. In the Book of Poker Incantations, “Lavabit tesseras!” is the only spell that truly randomizes the cards. Play poker long enough, and you will eventually see a player wave their hands at the dealer, indicating that they want the dealer to wash the deck. Before placing it into the automatic shuffler. Be of good cheer, because this is further confirmation that poker is not dead.
Well – A term for the dealer's rack, in which they keep change, chips, all-in buttons, etc.
Whale – A bad player who has plenty of money to punt off to the table. Entire games can be built around a whale, and the moment the whale leaves, the game is in danger of breaking.
Wheel – The lowest possible straight, from ace to five. An ace-to-five straight flush is called a steel wheel. In ace-to-five lowball games, a wheel is the nuts. Deuce-to-seven players sometimes refer to as a wheel, but such players are not to be trusted.
Whiff – To completely miss a flop, or otherwise not make a good hand. Usage: “In the razz round, I started with ace-deuce-three, but whiffed everything and ended up with a pair of nines. FML.”
Wired – In stud, to have a pair in the hole. Despite the legendary Vince Van Patten trying to bring the term into hold’em, it never caught on, leaving Vince’s usage as a quaint conceit.
World Series of Poker – Also known as the WSOP, or (outside baseball circles) The World Series. By far the most famous tournament festival in the world, the WSOP has been around for over 50 years, and is the grand gathering of the poker community. Every year, hope springs eternal, and thousands of players beg, borrow, or crowd-source the $10,000 buy-in to the main event, dreaming of an 8-figure pay-out at the end of it all. When this many people attend such an event, and call it 'Summer Camp,' knowing that they will probably be poorer when it ends than when it started, you can be very sure that poker is not dead.
Wrap – In Omaha, a hand which wraps around the board, providing seemingly innumerable outs to make a straight. For example, if you hold in your hand, and the flop is , then any , , , or (13 remaining outs) will give you a straight. Sufficiently pathological hand/board combinations can produce a 20-out wrap. Usage: “We got it all in on the flop, and I had top set for the nuts. Then she said, ‘I have a 17-out wrap and the flush draw.’ FML.”

X

Y

Yahtzee – An expression, borrowed from the dice game, meaning that you, or another player, just hit their gin card. Usage: “I c-bet the flop with nothing but one overcard and a gutter, but then binked the straight on the turn. Yahtzee.”

Z

Book of Poker Incantations

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first publication of any compendium of poker player spells. The author takes no responsibility for the use or misuse of these spells.

"Commissum est ollam!" – Pot-committed
"Frigus tesseras!" – Cooler
"Heros pecunia!" – Hero call
"Lavabit tesseras!" – Wash the deck
"Obstructore!" – Blocker
"Olim!" – One time
"Olla imperium!" – Pot control
"Olla magnum!" – Pot odds
"Semper mori defendere!" – MDF
"Vincere duos!" – Any two cards
"Vocatus daemonium!" – Calling demon

The poker glossary

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Book of Poker Incantations