The Poker Glossary: 100+ Terms Every Player Should Know

Poker Guides · Reference

Poker has built up a genuinely enormous vocabulary over its long history - some terms are essential to understand the rules themselves, others are just table culture. This glossary organizes the most important ones by category, so you can find what you need quickly.

Betting & Action Terms

Hand Strength & Type Terms

• Nuts - the best possible hand given the current board
• Made hand - a hand that's already complete, as opposed to a draw
• Drawing hand - a hand not yet complete but with outs to improve, like a flush or straight draw
• Kicker - a card that doesn't contribute to your hand's category but breaks ties against an opponent with the same hand type
• Two-outer - a draw with only two remaining cards that would complete it, a very weak draw
• Backdoor draw - a draw requiring two specific favorable cards in a row (turn and river) to complete, much less likely than a standard draw
• Set - three of a kind made using a pocket pair plus one matching community card (as distinct from "trips," made with one hole card matching two community cards)
• Wheel - the lowest possible straight, A-2-3-4-5

Position & Table Terms

See our full Poker Table Positions guide for detailed explanations of UTG, MP, CO, BTN, SB, and BB.

• In position (IP) - acting after your opponent on a given betting round
• Out of position (OOP) - acting before your opponent, a positional disadvantage
• Heads-up - a hand or match involving only two players
• Button - the dealer position, acting last postflop, the strongest seat at the table

Tournament-Specific Terms

• Bubble - the stage just before players start cashing in a tournament, see our Tournament Structures guide
• ICM - Independent Chip Model, the framework for converting tournament chips into real-money equity
• Min-cash - finishing in the lowest paid position of a tournament
• Deep stack - a large chip stack relative to the blinds, allowing for more strategic postflop play
• Short stack - a small chip stack relative to the blinds, often limiting a player to all-in-or-fold decisions
• Satellite - a smaller tournament awarding entry into a larger event as the prize, see our Satellite Tournaments guide
• Freezeout - a tournament format with no option to rebuy chips once eliminated
• Rebuy - a tournament format allowing players to buy back in after being eliminated, typically within a set early period
• Final table - the last table of players remaining in a tournament

Strategy & Analysis Terms

• GTO (Game Theory Optimal) - a theoretically unexploitable strategy, see our GTO vs. Exploitative guide
• Range - the full set of possible hands a player could hold in a given situation, based on their actions
• Equity - a hand's mathematical share of the pot based on its probability of winning
• Fold equity - the added value a bet or raise carries specifically from the chance an opponent folds
• Variance - the natural short-term swings in results, even with correct decisions, see our Mental Game guide
• Tilt - playing worse due to emotional frustration, typically after a bad outcome
• Solver - software calculating mathematically optimal strategies across simulated scenarios

Online-Specific Terms

• HUD (Heads-Up Display) - a software overlay showing statistical data about opponents based on hand history
• Multi-tabling - playing more than one table simultaneously, see our Multi-Tabling guide
• Rake - the fee taken by the poker room from cash game pots or built into tournament buy-ins
• RNG (Random Number Generator) - the certified software system that shuffles and deals cards fairly in online poker
• Auto-fold - a setting that automatically folds a hand when it's not your turn to act and you take no action

Table Culture & Slang

• Fish - a weak or inexperienced player
• Shark - a strong, experienced player
• Whale - a player who gambles very large amounts, often loosely
• Donk bet - a bet made by a player out of position into the previous round's aggressor, generally considered an unconventional or weak line
• Bad beat - losing a hand despite being a significant statistical favorite
• Cooler - a hand where two very strong holdings clash, producing an unavoidably large loss for one player regardless of skill