The Terms of Poker

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

Ante: The little part of a wager put down by all players to build the pot at the beginning of each poker hand.

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

Complete Hand: A hand that’s made up out of all five playing cards – a flush, straight, full house or a straight flush

House: The business that runs the game

Inside Straight: A hand consisting of four playing cards required to create a straight with one card in the centre absent.

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

Muck: The mound of playing cards either folded or burned in front of the dealer.

Open-ended straight: A poker hand containing four consecutive cards that with the addition of a single card at either end will complete a straight.

Pocket: The playing cards in a players possession that only they can see.

Protect: Putting a chip on your cards to indicate that you are still in the game to ensure that your set of cards is not accidentally mucked by the dealer or fouled by a discarded hand.

Quads: Four of a kind.

Rank: The numerical worth given to a card (not the suit).

Tell: Some clue that a player (but not meaning to) gives off suggesting something about their hand to other players.

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

Trips: Three of a kind.

Variance: The changes in a players bankroll, when the changes in your funds are big your variance is larger.