Poker Technique and Strategy Terms

Advertising

The technique of openly displaying a card or a play to convey a desired impression of your playing style as a way to throw off other players.

Bluff

The act of implying you have a strong hand by raising or betting in order to get other players to fold when you actually have a weak hand. Read more on poker bluffs here.

Buy the Pot

This is used to describe the act of bluffing in hopes that the rest of the players will fold to give you the win. Usually a strategy when no one else is betting.

Chase

When chasing a player is staying in a game they are unlikely to win in order to see the draw cards that could help, or because of the amount a player already has invested in the pot.

Draw

The act of playing a hand in hopes of getting a card that can be used to complete the hand.

Draw Dead

This is when a player draws on a hand even though there is no way they can win it, which they have no way of knowing at the time.

Drawing Thin

When a player only has a few cards that could be drawn to win the hand. The Draw isn't dead because there is a chance but it is a very slim one.

Fast Play

Playing a hand aggressively is known as fast play.

Fold

The act of forfeiting your hand in a game of poker taking yourself out of play for the pot.

Laydown

When a player has a strong hand but folds because they believe another player has a better hand it is called a laydown.

Leak

Literally a leak in a player's game, or a weakness that leads to them winning less.

Pay Off

A pay off is when the pot odds are good enough that a player with a weak hand calls to stay in hoping to get something on the draw.

Play the Board (Texas Hold'Em)

When a player's best possible hand is comprised of the cards on the board and not their hole cards going into a show down the player is playing the board. Doing so the best a player can do is split the pot.

Position Bet

A bet made based on a players position at the table rather than their hand.

Pot Committed

This is a situation in which the pot has reached such a high number of chips a player literally has to call the rest of their chips to stay in the game because their stack is so low.

Put On

The action of guessing another player's hand based on the actions of the other player. This is done to help you decide what move to make next.

Represent

To represent is to imply that you have a certain type of hand whether a player actually does or is bluffing.

Sell

This is similar to soft play. It is the act of betting less than the maximum bet, sometimes well below, when a player has a strong hand in order to keep others in the game that might otherwise fold or not call after a big bet or raise. Sell occurs in spread limit poker.

Semi-bluff

This refers to the action of bluffing in which it would be preferable to have all the others fold but there's still the possibility of a good hand if they don't. In other words, the player has a chance of getting something on the draw to improve the hand.

Slow Play

Slow play is the strategy of playing a good hand more passively to get other players betting and adding to the pot by simply calling other raises or making only small raises.

Smooth Call

A smooth call is simply a call, but it can be done as a cautionary act even if a player has good cards, or whenever a player has a good hand and is slow playing so as to not scare other players away from betting more.

Snow

To purposely play a bad hand in order to bluff.

Soft Play

It's the act of taking it easy on another player at the table by not playing as aggressively as one normally would. Though it's a nice thing to do it isn't allowed in tournament play.

Stop and Go

This is a betting term in which a player calls and raises going back and forth or in other words stops raising, then raises and so on. More specifically it refers to calling a raise then on the next cards goes straight for the raise.

String Bet

A string bet is one in which the player calls and raises but not in one consecutive motion of getting the chips for both the call and the raise in the pot at the same time. In other words, he puts his chips in to call then goes for more chips without stating the intention of raising or the amount. The action is frowned upon and the raise can be determined null if the player doesn't first state they're intention to call and raise.

Tell

An action that gives away hints at the strength of a player's hand or what they might do next. Tells are usually something a player doesn't realize they're doing, however savvy player will intentionally fake a tell to throw other players off. Learn how to spot poker tells in this strategy article.

Back to the Poker Terms index.