Poker Expressions

Action: The time a participant is to do something.  A participant could say to the dealer “Who has the action” should they have lost track of whose turn it is.

Ante: A small part of a wager put down by each player to build the pot at the beginning of every poker hand.

Burn: The procedure carried out when a dealer puts the top playing card from the deck, face down, on the discard stack.  This procedure is done after each betting round before dealing the next community playing card(s).  This is done to eliminate the chance that a player has seen the next card to be dealt and in this way gaining an unfair advantage.

Complete Hand: A full five card hand such as a straight, flush, straight flush or full house.

House: The establishment that runs the game

Inside Straight: A hand containing four playing cards required to make a straight except one in the middle.

Kicker: A playing card in a player’s poker hand that is made use of as a tiebreaker when two competitors have hands that are of identical ranking.

Muck: A pile of playing cards either burned or folded in front of the dealer.

Open-ended straight: A poker hand of four sequential cards that requires an additional playing card at either end to complete a straight.

Pocket: Your cards that only you can see.

Protect: The act of keeping your poker hand by putting a chip on them so that it’s not fouled by a discarded hand or inadvertently mucked by the dealer.

Quads: Four of a kind.

Rank: The numerical value assigned to a card (not the suit).

Tell: A sign or tip-off that a player unknowingly reveals concerning their poker hand.

Toke: A small amount of cash given by the winner of the pot to the dealer.

Trips: Three of the same value.

Variance: The up and down swings in a players bankroll, wider swings in your bankroll means your variance is larger.