Poker glossary: 73 poker terms explained simply

The words the course uses, each explained in a sentence or two. Every lesson links its terms here.

All in: Betting every chip you have left. A player all in cannot be forced out of the hand and plays for the chips they could match.
Alpha: Bet ÷ (pot + bet): how often a bluff must work to break even, and the most you can fold before it does.
Bankroll: Money set aside only for poker, counted in buy-ins of the stakes you play.
bb (big blind): Bets, pots and win rates are counted in big blinds, so the numbers mean the same at any stakes.
bb/100: Win rate in big blinds won per 100 hands, the unit that compares results at any stakes.
Blinds: The two forced bets posted before the cards are dealt: the small blind by the player to the left of the button and the big blind by the next player. They give every hand a pot to play for.
Blocker: A card you hold or see that removes combinations from his range. Holding an ace leaves 3 combinations of AA instead of 6.
Bluff: A bet with a hand that wins only if the opponent folds.
Bluff catcher: A hand that beats only bluffs. Calling with it wins when he bluffs and loses to every value bet.
Board: The community cards in the middle of the table, which every player can use.
Board texture: How connected and suited the board is. Dry boards offer few draws; wet boards offer many.
Broadway cards: Ten, jack, queen, king and ace: the cards of the highest straight.
Bubble: The moment in a tournament just before the paid places, when busting costs the most.
Bubble factor: How much losing your stack hurts compared with how much doubling it helps, in prize money.
Burn card: The top card of the deck, dealt face down and out of play before the flop, the turn and the river, so nobody can glimpse a card that is about to come.
Button: The disc that marks the dealer's seat. It moves one seat to the left after every hand, and the player on it acts last on the flop, turn and river.
Buy-in: The chips you sit down with in a cash game (often 100 big blinds), or the entry fee of a tournament.
Check-raise: Checking, then raising when an opponent bets on the same round.
Chip EV: Expected value counted in chips. Near the money, chips are not cash, so it can mislead.
Clairvoyance game: A toy game where the bettor knows who wins: he holds either the nuts or nothing.
Combinations: The ways a hand can be dealt: 6 for a pair and 16 for two different ranks, before any card is seen.
Complement rule: The chance that something happens at least once is 1 minus the chance that it never happens.
Connectors: Two cards of consecutive ranks, such as 8 and 7. Suited connectors also share a suit.
Domination: When two hands share a card and one has the higher other card, such as ace-king against ace-nine. The dominated hand wins only about a quarter of the time.
Draw: A hand that is weak now but becomes strong with the right card, such as four cards to a flush.
Edge: Expected profit per unit staked. Winning 60% of even-money bets is a 20% edge.
Equilibrium: A pair of strategies where neither player can gain by changing his own. Also called game-theory optimal (GTO).
Equity: Your share of the pot if all the cards were dealt out now: how often you win, with ties counted as half.
EV (expected value): What a decision wins or loses on average if you could repeat it many times.
Exploiting: Playing to earn the most against how this opponent actually plays, at the cost of becoming exploitable yourself.
Flop: The first three board cards, dealt face up together, and the betting round that follows them.
Fold equity: What a bet earns from the times the opponent folds.
Free card: A turn or river card seen without paying for it, because everyone checked.
Geometric sizing: The same share of the pot bet on every street, chosen so the stacks go in by the river.
Hole cards: Your two private cards, dealt face down.
ICM (independent chip model): Turns tournament stacks into shares of the prize money, assuming each player's chance to finish first is his share of the chips.
Implied odds: Money you expect to win on later streets when you hit, which can pay for a call that the price alone does not.
Indifferent: When two choices earn exactly the same, so switching between them gains nothing.
Kelly fraction: The share of a bankroll to stake that grows it fastest in the long run: your edge divided by the odds.
Kicker: A card that does not make the hand but breaks a tie between hands of the same rank, such as the king in ace-king on a board with an ace.
MDF (minimum defense frequency): How often you must call or raise so his bluffs do not profit automatically: pot ÷ (pot + bet).
Minimum raise: A raise must add at least as much as the last bet or raise did. Facing a bet of 4, the smallest raise is to 8.
Muck: To throw your cards away: when you fold, or when you give up at the showdown without showing.
Multiway pot: A pot with three or more players in the hand.
Odds: A chance written as a ratio. 4 to 1 against means it fails 4 times for every time it happens, which is 1 in 5, or 20%.
Outs: The cards still to come that turn your hand into the likely winner.
PFR: Preflop raise: the share of hands in which a player raises before the flop.
Playing the board: When the best five cards of your hand are all on the board, so your own two cards add nothing and the pot is usually split.
Polarized: A betting range made of strong hands and bluffs, with nothing in between.
Position: Where you sit compared with the button. Being in position means you act after your opponent on the flop, turn and river.
Pot odds: The pot compared with the call: calling 20 bb to win 60 bb lays you 3 to 1.
Preflop: The first betting round, after everyone gets two hole cards and before any board card is dealt.
Price: What a call needs to win: the call divided by the pot after your call. With more equity than the price, the call makes money.
Prior: What you believed before the new evidence. Bayes' theorem combines it with the evidence.
Rake: The house's fee: a small share of each pot in cash games, or part of the entry in tournaments.
Range: Every hand a player could hold here, each weighted by how many ways it can be dealt and how likely he is to play it this way.
Risk of ruin: The chance of losing a whole bankroll, given a win rate and the size of the swings.
River: The fifth and last board card, and the last betting round.
Sample: The number of hands behind a statistic. A small sample gives a wide error bar.
Semi-bluff: A bet with a draw: it wins when he folds and can still win when he calls.
Set: Three of a kind made with a pocket pair and one matching card on the board.
Showdown: After the last bet, the players still in show their hands, and the best five-card hand wins the pot.
Side pot: A separate pot for the chips a player who is all in cannot match. Only the players who put chips into it can win it.
Stack-to-pot ratio: The smaller stack divided by the pot. The lower it is, the fewer bets it takes to get all the chips in: three pot-size bets cover a ratio of 13.
Standard deviation: The typical size of a swing. A winning player might earn 5 bb per 100 hands with a standard deviation near 100.
Swap: Two players trade a share of each other's results to cut their swings.
The nuts: The best possible hand on this board.
Tilt: Playing worse because of emotion, usually after losses or bad luck.
Toy game: A simplified version of poker, small enough to solve exactly.
Turn: The fourth board card, and the betting round after it.
Value bet: A bet that wants to be called by worse hands.
Variance: How far results swing around the expected value. The swings grow with the square root of the number of hands, the expected value with the number itself.
VPIP: Voluntarily put money in pot: the share of hands in which a player puts chips in before the flop by choice (posting a blind does not count).

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