Poker glossary: 278 terms explained, from the rules to solver vocabulary

Poker has a vocabulary of its own and almost none of it is explained at the table. This glossary runs to 278 entries, each written in two registers: a sentence or two that settles the question immediately, then as much depth as the term actually warrants.

The terms people look up most often, answered in a line each:

Tilt — playing worse than you know how to because of how you feel, usually after a bad beat. The single biggest reason competent players lose money.

Showdown — the end of a hand, where the remaining players reveal their cards and the best one takes the pot. The last player to bet or raise shows first.

Under the gun (UTG) — the seat immediately to the left of the big blind, first to act before the flop, and the tightest opening range at the table.

Donk bet — betting out of position into the player who raised before the flop instead of checking to them. Long treated as a beginner's error; correct at low frequency on boards that favour the caller.

Freeroll — two meanings: a tournament with no entry fee that still pays real prizes, and a spot in a hand where you cannot lose but might win.

Rake — the house's cut of a pot or a tournament entry, and the reason a break-even player is a losing player.

Mystery bounty — a knockout format where the reward for an elimination is a sealed random amount drawn later rather than a fixed share of the stack.

Browse by letter or by category below, and follow the links between entries — the terms that matter are the ones that connect to other terms.

The glossary at a glance

Entries: 278, all written in our own words.

Categories: rules, hands, betting, strategy, tournaments, cash games, online and slang. The category reflects where a term is used, not how advanced it is.

Shape of an entry: a stand-alone definition first, then the longer explanation where the term deserves one, usually with an example, the related terms worth reading next, and the alternative names the same idea travels under.

Aliases: searched abbreviations land on the full entry — UTG on under the gun, SNG on sit and go, GTO on game theory optimal, ICM on the independent chip model.

What it is not: a dictionary of operator brand names. Where a room has invented a name for an idea that already had one, the entry files the mechanic and names the brand versions.

Count verified: 14 November 2026.

What is in here

The glossary covers four kinds of word, and they are worth distinguishing because they are learned at different stages.

The rules and hand names come first: what the nuts is on a given board, how a side pot forms when a short stack is all-in, what a royal flush beats and how often it actually arrives. These are the entries a player needs on day one, and they are the ones most often half-learned.

The table and format jargon comes next — the language of a structure sheet and a cashier. Under the gun, the cutoff, a straddle, rake and its cap, a bounty or a mystery bounty, late registration, a satellite, a sit and go, a spin-and-go. A player who cannot read a structure sheet is paying for information they could have had for nothing.

The strategy vocabulary is the third layer and the largest: ranges and how they are counted in combinations, equity and fold equity, pot odds and implied odds, stack-to-pot ratio, the independent chip model, minimum defence frequency, polarised and merged ranges, blockers, push-fold. Much of this language arrived with solvers, and a good deal of it is used loosely even by strong players. Where a term has a precise meaning, these entries give it.

The fourth group is slang and table culture: the fish, the nit, the whale, the maniac, angle shooting, a slow roll, rabbit hunting, ratholing. Some of it is harmless colour and some of it describes conduct that gets a player barred, and the entries say which is which.

How to read an entry

Each term opens with a definition written to stand alone — enough to settle the question without reading further. Beneath it, where the term deserves it, sits the longer explanation: how the concept behaves in practice, where it is commonly misunderstood, and what it costs to get wrong. Many entries carry an example, the related terms worth reading next, and the alternative names the same idea travels under, so a player who searched for SNG lands on sit and go and a player who searched for UTG lands on under the gun.

Which terms a beginner should learn first

The mechanical ones, because they cost money when half-known: how the nuts is read off the board; how a side pot forms when a player is all-in; what rake is and where its cap falls; and the names of the seats — under the gun, the cutoff, the button — because position decides which hands are playable at all. After those, pot odds and outs, in that order, because together they turn a guess into arithmetic.

The strategy vocabulary can wait. A player who knows what a blocker is but misreads a side pot is studying the wrong half of the game.

Where the vocabulary is changing

Two parts of the language are still moving. Solver vocabulary is one: terms like node locking, indifference, geometric sizing and uncapped range were specialist a few years ago and are now ordinary in study groups. Operator and format vocabulary is the other, because rooms invent names faster than the game invents concepts — several lottery sit-and-go formats, fast-fold variants and reward schemes are brand names for ideas that already had names. Where that is the case, the entry says so rather than treating marketing as terminology. The newest example is the jackpot knockout: GGPoker's Ocean KO, Winamax's Space KO and Betclic's Smash KO are three brand names for one mechanic, and the glossary files the mechanic under its own entry as well as naming each room's version.

Missing a term

The glossary is extended with each update, with a bias toward the terms a player meets in real games rather than the ones that fill out an alphabet. If something you searched for is not here, write to info@poker-in.com and it will go into the next batch.