Glossary
Poker jargon, plainly explained
Short, precise definitions of the terms used across the lessons and puzzles here, each with a worked example.
- AnteA small forced bet posted by every player before the hand starts, on top of the blinds, adding dead money to the pot regardless of who wins it.
- BarrelA bet made on a second or later street that continues pressure applied on an earlier one, most often as a bluff or semi-bluff that keeps firing after the flop.
- BlockersCards in your own hand that remove matching combinations from an opponent's possible range, since they cannot hold cards you already have.
- Bluff-catcherA hand that beats every bluff in an opponent's range but loses to every value hand in it, so its whole worth depends on how many bluffs that range actually contains.
- Board textureHow much a board's suits and connectivity let hands improve, ranging from wet (draw-heavy) to dry (almost nothing beyond a made hand is live).
- BroadwayAny card ranked ten or higher: ten, jack, queen, king, or ace. A broadway hand holds two of them.
- BubbleThe stretch of a tournament immediately before the money, where the next elimination decides who leaves with nothing and who cashes.
- ComboOne specific two-card holding within a hand class, such as one of the six ways to be dealt pocket aces or one of the four ways to hold a particular suited ace.
- CounterfeitWhen a community card pairs a rank you do not hold, so a new pair appears on the board that any single opponent card can turn into trips, quietly devaluing a hand that looked safe.
- Dead moneyChips already committed to the pot, such as blinds and antes, that no longer belong to any player and are simply there to be won.
- Dominated handA hand that shares a card with a stronger holding of the same shape, such as two ace-high hands, and so is a significant underdog before any board even falls.
- Effective stackThe smaller of two players' stacks in a confrontation, since that is the most either side can actually win or lose in the hand.
- EquityThe share of the pot a hand or range expects to win on average across every way the remaining cards could come.
- Equity realisationThe share of a hand's raw equity that actually gets converted into chips, as opposed to its fair share of the pot on paper.
- Fold equityThe extra value a bet or raise carries from the chance it wins the pot outright by making the opponent fold, on top of whatever raw equity the hand has if called.
- Heads-upA hand, or an entire match, played between exactly two players.
- ICMIndependent Chip Model: converts tournament chip stacks into real dollar equity by weighing each player's finishing chances against the payouts.
- Implied oddsThe extra money a drawing hand expects to win on later streets if it hits, added on top of what raw pot odds alone justify.
- KickerThe highest unpaired card in a hand, used to break a tie between two hands of the same category, such as two hands that both hold top pair.
- LevellingReasoning in circles about what an opponent thinks you think they have, until the read stops being grounded in what their actual range would do.
- MDFMinimum defence frequency: the smallest share of your range you must continue with against a bet so the bettor can't profit by bluffing any two cards.
- MergedA range or bet that keeps its medium-strength hands in the betting line rather than checking or folding them out, the opposite of a polarised one.
- Nash equilibriumThe unexploitable strategy for a spot: the one no opponent can profit from by deviating away from, regardless of how they adjust.
- Opening rangeThe set of starting hands worth raising first in from a given position, with nobody else having entered the pot yet.
- OutsThe cards remaining in the deck that turn a hand into the winner.
- Pay jumpA point on a tournament payout ladder where finishing one place higher pays meaningfully more, sharply increasing the real-money cost of busting just before it.
- PolarisedA range or bet split between very strong hands and near-total bluffs, with the middling hands folded out or checked back rather than bet.
- PositionWhere a player sits relative to the dealer button, and so how much information they have before acting: under the gun (first to act), middle position, the cutoff, and the button (last to act) are the four common reference points.
- Pot oddsThe price the pot is offering: the fraction of the final pot you must contribute to call, expressed as the equity you need to break even.
- Push/foldThe short-stack strategy, typically under about 15 big blinds, where every decision collapses to two options: shove all in, or fold.
- RaceA close-to-even preflop confrontation, most often a pocket pair against two overcards, where neither side is a big favourite.
- RangeThe full set of hands a player could hold in a spot, each weighted by how likely it is, rather than a single guessed hand.
- Suited connectorTwo cards of the same suit with consecutive or near-consecutive ranks, such as 9s-8s, valued for their combined straight and flush potential rather than their showdown strength as a pair of high cards.
- The nutsThe single best possible five-card hand on the exact board in front of you, a property of the board itself rather than of any hand you hold.