Poker Rake

Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game. It is generally 5 to 10 percent of the pot in each poker hand, up to a predetermined maximum amount, but not only can this percentage be anything, there are other non-percentage ways for a casino to take the rake. Some [...]

Poker Tournament

A poker tournament is a tournament in which the winners are decided by playing poker, usually a particular style of poker.
Contrast this to a ring game, where the game is ongoing with no formal structure to determine a single winner in a certain length of time.
Buy-ins and prizes
To enter a typical tournament, a player pays [...]

Poker Showdown

In all poker games, if more than one player remains after the last betting round, remaining players expose and compare their hands to determine the winner or winners. This is called the showdown.
To win any part of a pot, a player must show all of his cards faceup on the table, whether they were used [...]

Bluffing in Poker

In the card game of poker, to bluff is to bet or raise with an inferior hand. This is useful because it can cause other players to believe the bluffing player has a dominant hand, so that they all fold; the bluffing player then wins the pot. By extension, the terms are often used outside [...]

Poker Betting Limits

Betting limits apply to the amount a player may open or raise, and come in four common forms: no limit, pot limit (the two collectively called big bet poker), fixed limit, and spread limit.
All such games have a minimum bet as well as the stated maximums, and also commonly a betting unit, which is the [...]

Forced Bets in Poker

All poker games require some forced bets in order to create an initial stake for the players to contest. The requirements for forced bets, and the betting limits of the game (see below) are collectively called the game’s betting structure.
Ante
An ante is a forced bet in which each player places an equal amount of money [...]

Poker Betting Etiquette

Action and Betting
When participating in the hand, a player is expected to keep track of the betting action. Losing track of the amount needed to call, called the bet to the player, happens occasionally, but multiple occurrences of this slow the game down and so it is discouraged. The dealer may be given the responsibility [...]

Poker Betting Procedure

Procedure
Players in a poker game act in turn, in clockwise rotation (acting out of turn can negatively affect other players). When it is a player’s turn to act, the first verbal declaration or action he takes binds him to his choice of action; this rule prevents a player from changing his action after seeing how [...]

Poker Jargon: Aggression

In the game of poker, opens and raises are considered aggressive plays, while calls and checks are considered passive (though a check-raise would be considered a very aggressive play). It is said that “aggression has its own value”, meaning that often aggressive plays can make money with weak hands because of bluff value. In general, [...]

Poker Outs

In a poker game with more than one betting round, an out is any unseen card that, if drawn, will improve a player’s hand to one that is likely to win. Knowing the number of outs a player has is an important part of poker strategy. For example in draw poker, a hand with four [...]

Pot Odds

Be sure to read my article on counting cards to compare pot odds to outs! Pot odds are the ratio of the current size of the pot to the cost of a contemplated call. In other words, if the pot contains $100, and a player must call $10 to stay in the hand, then the [...]

Poker Jargon: Action Button

Action Button: A marker similar to a kill button, on which a player places an extra forced bet. In a seven-card stud high-low game, the action button is awarded to the winner of a scoop pot above a certain size, signifying that in the next pot, that player will be required to post an amount [...]

Poker Jargon: Action

Act
To make a play (bet, raise, call, fold) while in turn
Action

A player’s turn to act. The action is yours
An eagerness to gamble. There’s plenty of action at this table
All calls related to a bet. For instance, if you bet $10 and three people call that bet, you have $30 worth of action on your $10 [...]