The Poker Terms You Actually Need to Know

Poker has a language, and most guides assume you already speak it. This one does not. Below are the words that actually come up at the table, in plain English, grouped by where they show up in a hand. Where a term has a whole strategy behind it, there is a link to go deeper.

The table

• Button. The seat that acts last after the flop. The best seat in poker, because acting last means acting with the most information. (See why position is an edge.)
• Blinds. The two forced bets that start the action: the small blind and the big blind, posted by the two seats left of the button.
• Position. Where you sit relative to the action. You are in position if you act after your opponent, out of position if you act first.
• Under the gun. The seat that acts first before the flop. The worst spot to play a wide range from.

The cards and the hands

• Hole cards. Your two private cards.
• Community cards. The shared cards in the middle, dealt as the flop (first three), the turn (fourth), and the river (fifth).
• Suited / offsuit. Two cards of the same suit, or of different suits.
• Kicker. Your next-best card, used to break ties when two players have the same pair.
• Notation. Shorthand for hands: letters for high cards (A, K, Q, J, T), s for suited, o for offsuit, no letter for a pair. So AKs is ace-king suited, AKo is ace-king offsuit, QQ is pocket queens, and 72o is the worst starting hand there is.

The betting

• Check. Decline to bet while keeping your hand, when no one has bet.
• Bet / raise / re-raise. Put chips in, increase a bet, or increase someone else’s raise. A re-raise before the flop is also called a 3-bet.
• Call. Match the current bet.
• Fold. Give up your hand and any chips you have already put in.
• All-in. Bet every chip you have.
• C-bet (continuation bet). A bet on the flop by the player who raised before it.
• Pot. All the chips bet so far, which is what you are playing for.

Draws and odds

• Outs. The cards still in the deck that improve your hand to a likely winner.
• Draw. An unfinished hand hoping to improve, usually a flush draw (four to a flush) or a straight draw (an open-ended straight draw, or OESD, has eight outs).
• Pot odds. The price you are getting to call: the size of your call versus the size of the pot. (See pot odds and equity.)
• Equity. Your hand’s share of the pot, meaning how often it wins if the hand were played to the end right now.
• Implied odds. The chips you expect to win on later streets if you hit, on top of what is in the pot now.

Reading the table and the player types

• Tell. Any pattern that gives away the strength of a hand: a bet size, a timing habit, a frequency. (See how to read opponents.)
• Range. All the hands a player could have in a spot. Good players think in ranges, not single hands.
• Bluff / semi-bluff / value bet. A bet that wants a better hand to fold; a bluff that also has a draw to fall back on; and a bet that wants a worse hand to call. (See when to bluff.)
• Tilt. Letting emotion, usually after a bad beat, push you into worse decisions.
• The player types, each with its own way to beat it:
  • Calling station. Calls too much, folds too little.
  • Maniac. Bets and raises relentlessly with anything.
  • Nit / rock. Plays almost nothing and only bets the goods.
  • TAG. Tight and aggressive, the solid, hard-to-beat regular.
  • LAG. Loose and aggressive, but skilled rather than spew.
  • Fish. The player with exploitable leaks that everyone else is hunting. Do not be this one.

Now you speak poker. The rest of the Playing Better Poker series puts these words to work, and the opponents are waiting for you to use them. Take a seat.