A Beginners Guide to Poker Jargon
It is not an uncommon occurrence for the new poker player to stride into a club, sit at a table and not understand a word being spoken. This is not a conspiracy against the new guy, these players are using terms and abbreviations that they have picked up from long experience in clubs and casinos. Poker is a game rife with special words and ideas. This article is particularly meant for the beginner who is playing online and cannot decipher the chat messages posted on the board in the poker rooms and forums.
The first step for you to take is to learn the lingo in the most popular of the online games – Texas hold’em. Whether you are playing a limit, pot-limit, or no-limit game, there will from two to ten folks playing with you. The person handing out the cards to the players is the dealer. The dealer’s location at the table is demarcated by a special “button,” thus he may be termed “the button.” The button or dealer in online games is not to be thought of as the same as the dealer in a casino. The casino dealer is being paid for his work by the casino and in no way is a participant in the game.
Situated in back of the dealer are two players who are there to make blind bets. Bet size depends solely on the limit at the table. The first bettor puts one half of the limit as a blind bet, the bet being termed as a small blind. The second bettor makes a full-limit bet which is called the big blind. So, in the case of a table limit of $2/$4, the small blind bet is for $2 and the second big blind bet is for $4. Usually, terms are abbreviated to indicate the positions of the players. The small blind is SB and the big blind is BB. It is most confusing that those abbreviations, SB and BB, can also mean small bet and big bet which is not the same at all, so beware.
The small blind player is always the first to make the move. His position is therefore counted as the first position, while the button (the dealer’s) position is the last. The third player, the one immediately after the big blind, is in the early position and is said to be “under the gun” or UTG. The next two positions are likewise “early positions” and are abbreviated as UTG + 1 and UTG + 2.
Okay, lets continue. The next three players are in the middle positions: MP1, MP2, and MP3. Following these is the “late” position which is the player directly before the button. His position is known as the cutoff or CO. Lastly, the button himself plays.
Those positions listed above exist for a Texas hold’em game of ten players. Less players than ten and an appropriate number of positions are eliminated.
With that out of the way, lets begin the play. The first step is the preflop, where each player is dealt two pocket cards. The next steps in the game are referred to as streets and are the flop, the turn (fourth street) and the river (fifth street). While this is going on, cards are laid on the table (AKA, the board). These cards are known as the relevant streets, first three flop cards, then one turn and one river card. The flop cards in different suits are referred to as a rainbow.
This is just the most basic stuff you need to keep in mind when playing online. Continue to learn more poker jargon so you understand more and more of the strange conversation that exists in these online games. You will definitely be doing yourself a favor. You will win more and have more fun when you know what is being said around you and the meaning of the terms at the table.
The author of this article plays online poker and gets Rakeback at Red Star Poker where they offer the highest Red Star Rakeback.