P - Poker Terms
A jack, king, or queen (i.e., a card with a picture on it).
Let's see some paint.
Two cards of the same rank. If you hold AAKJ3, you have a pair. See also top pair, middle pair, bottom pair, and two pair.
To pass is to fold.
Passive is a style of play that is characterized by reluctance to bet and raise. This does not always mean tight. A typical loose-passive player will call with almost anything, but raise only with very powerful hands (see calling station). A passive table is one with many passive players, so that, for example, few hands are raised pre-flop.
In draw games, a pat hand is one to which you draw no cards. In lowball, J7542 is a pat jack, but also offers a draw to a 7.
The other day I made pat straights twice in a row.
To call a bet by a player you're reasonably sure has you beat. Usually you ought to have some sort of reason to do this, other than just generosity. Weak players pay you off more often than other players.
I was pretty sure he had the flush, but with all that money in the pot I figured it was worth paying him off to be sure.
When you only have one way to make a hand, you need perfect cards. Usually this means two cards. If you hold 8JQ, you need two perfect cards for a straight. To catch perfect is to hit a perfect card.
Any of a number of variants of hold'em in which each player gets three cards and must discard one at some point (usually before or after pre-flop betting, after the flop, or after the second round of betting).
To play a hand in poker means to make it past the initial round of betting. In seven card stud, this usually means calling the bring-in, while in hold'em, this means calling the big blind. If someone says they haven't played a hand in hours, they're not usually telling you that they've been walking, they're whining that they haven't had cards good enough to play. Don't encourage them.
To make a play, or put a play on (someone), means to present a pattern of behavior inconsistent with your cards, that will mislead your opponent and cause them to make a mistake. Often this means bluffing them out of a pot, but it can also mean getting them to call when you have a strong hand, or more generally anything calculated to guide their behavior.
To play back at someone is to raise their opening bet.
In flop games like hold'em, if your best five card hand uses the five community cards, you're playing the board. The best you can do in this situation is split the pot with anyone who calls. Nevertheless, betting can be a good idea if you don't think anyone else can improve on the board either. For example, if the board is ThJhQdKdAd, someone would have to have two diamonds not to be playing the board.
The two cards dealt to you face down in hold'em, or the first two face down in seven card stud are your pocket cards, or hole cards. Hold'em players tend to call them pocket cards, stud players tend to call them hole cards. See also pocket pair.
Two pocket cards of the same rank.
Poker isn't just a card game - it's many card games. While no definition is going to satisfy everyone, the majority of poker games do share some common features, especially betting in rounds and the ranking of hands. Poker is commonly played in cardrooms (often within casinos) and in private home games (illegally in many states). The games played in cardrooms seem to divide into stud games, draw games, and flop games. In home games, however, anything goes, including games that seem to have no reason to be called poker. The varieties played in home games probably number in the hundreds, or even the thousands. Some common cardroom games include Texas Hold'em, Seven Card Stud, Omaha, Razz, Lowball, Pineapple, and Anaconda. (Okay, just kidding about the anaconda.)
Position refers to your place at the table, especially with respect to the order of betting within a particular betting round. The first few players to act are said to be in early position, the next few in middle position, and the last few in late position. Late position is almost always best, since you have the advantage of knowing what your opponents have done. For this reason, many players are more liberal about the hands they will play from later positions. In some games (most flop and draw games), position is fixed from one round of betting to the next, and the dealer (or the player on the button) is always in last position.
More generally, to have position on someone is to be in a position to bet after them, either during a particular hand or in general. You have position on anyone sitting immediately to your right, since you will far more often than not be able to act after them.
I didn't think he could've made the straight because he would've had to be playing 65 in early position. Shows what I know.
A position bet is a bet made more on the strength of one's position than on the strength of one's hand. A player on the button in hold'em is in good position to steal the pot if no one else opens.
To post a bet is to place your chips in the pot (or, commonly, out in front of you, so that your bet can be counted). In poker, posting usually means a forced bet, such as a blind.
All the money in the middle of the poker table that goes to the winner of the hand is the pot. Any player who has not yet folded is said to be "in the pot." A player who has called an initial bet is said to have entered the pot.
Any game in which the maximum bet or raise is the size of the pot. For raises, the size of the pot includes the call, so if the pot is $100 and player A bets $100, player B can throw $400 out for a maximum raise (calling the $100 and then raising the size of the $300 pot).
The ratio of the amount of money in the pot to the amount of money it will cost you to call a bet. The greater the pot odds, the more likely you should be to call (all else being equal), because you will have to win fewer times (in the long run) to make the bet positive expectation.
I knew it was a longshot, but with all that money in the pot and a draw to the nuts, I had no choice but to call.
A nickname for pocket 5's, usually in hold'em. This nickname comes from the internet newsgroup rec.gambling (now rec.gambling.poker), and is sometimes used among the readership of that newsgroup to identify other members.
Short for proposition player.
A proposition player, or "prop," is a player who is paid by a cardroom to play poker, usually in order to keep games going when they get shorthanded, or to get games started. Props are paid a salary, but they gamble with their own money. Props either learn how to play pretty solid poker or they run out of money. See also shill.
To protect a hand is to bet so as to reduce the chances of anyone outdrawing you (by getting them to fold). A hand that needs protection is one that is almost certainly best, but that is vulnerable to being outdrawn. Large pots make it difficult to protect hands, since players will be willing to chase more long shots. The structure of a game has a large impact on how easy it is to protect a hand, as do the personalities of the players at the table. It's easiest to protect a hand in no-limit play, where you can potentially make it as expensive as you like for someone to draw.
To protect your cards is to place a chip or some other small object (players often have particular artifacts they like to use) on top of them so that they don't accidentally get mucked by the dealer, mixed with another player's discards, or otherwise become dead when you'd like to play them.
A provider is a poker player who makes the game profitable for the other players at the table. Similar in meaning to fish, although provider has a somehow less negative connotation. A provider might be a decent player who just happens to be playing out of his/her league. A fish is usually someone who's probably out of any league.
What the dealer does with the pot when he or she figures out who the winner is. Because of the nature of poker tables, the dealer can almost always orient him- or herself so as to be facing the winner of the pot. From this position, pushing the pot (literally, the chips in the pot) will result in the movement of the pot towards the winner of the hand, so that the player can add the chips to his or her stacks. Aren't you glad you asked?
A pushka is an arrangement between two or more players to share part of the pots they win, or more precisely, the container into which the shared chips are placed. Typically pushka partners will place as much as $10 from each pot won into a container, and split the container's contents later. I've only heard this term in Maryland, although apparently it's due to the Polish word for box, via Yiddish. Of course removing chips from the table is illegal in table stakes games. See also scoot.
To put someone on a hand (or on a draw) is to guess that that is what they are holding.
When she re-raised the flop, I tentatively put her on two pair.
When she flat called the re-raise, I put her on the flush draw.