Poker Buzzwords for the Novice
It is only natural for a novice poker player to enter an online poker room, begin a game and find the players communicating in an almost alien language. After a while you begin to suspect that these are neither typos nor a plot against the newcomer, but terms and abbreviations which are obvious to any decent poker amateur. The game is full of poker-specific words and concepts. This article might be of some help to those of you who occasionally have trouble understanding some of the chat messages in online poker rooms or 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 first move is always made by the small blind player. Because of this, his position is counted as the first position. The button, or dealer, plays last and is counted as whatever that number is depending on the number of players at the table. The second move is by the big blind and the third player is still in an early position and “under the gun” or UTG. Following are the next two positions also considered “early” are known as UTG +1 and UTG + 2. Are you still with me?
The next three players represent the middle position: MP1, MP2, and MP3. The next “late” position includes the player immediately before the button – referred to as the cutoff or CO – and finally the button player him or her self.
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.
The game begins with the preflop wherein each player gets two pocket cards. Three “streets” come after this preflop: the flop, the turn, which is the fourth street and the river or fifth street. While these rounds are being dealt, community cards are laid face up on the table (AKA the “board”) and are designated after their pertinent streets, i.e. first three flop cards, then one turn and then on river card. The flop cards of different suits are known as a rainbow. Whew!
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.
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