Call: To bet an amount equal to a previous bet on a current round of betting. Also known as Calling a Bet or Seeing a Bet.

Check: The act of "not betting" and passing the bet option to the next player while still remaining an active player. Players cannot check when a bet has been made. Also called Pass.

Check and Raise: A player's raising of a bet after already checking in that round. Usually not permitted in private games.

Cut: The amount of money taken from the pot by the house as its fee for running the game. The cut is also called House Cut, Vigorish, and the Rake. The cut is also the act of separating the cards into two piles and restacking them in reverse order.

Dealer: The player or casino employee who shuffles the cards and deals them to the players.

Dealer's Choice: A rule where the current dealer chooses the poker variation to be played.

Deuce: A card term for the 2 of any suit.

Down: A card dealt with its pips "face-down" so that its value is known only to the holder of the card. Cards that are dealt face-down are called Downcards, or Closed Cards.

Draw: The exchange of cards allowed after the first round of betting in draw poker variations.

Draw Out: The evolution of an inferior hand into a good one by the drawing of advantageous cards.

Draw Poker: A form of poker where all cards are dealt "closed," and seen only by their holder.

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You should play a looser game against a tight player, a player who makes and calls bets only when he holds good hands. Since this player won't play with mediocre cards, you can force him out of the pot early with strong bets. You'll be saving money whenever your hand is mediocre and he bets.

Take advantage of his tight play by always figuring him for a good hand when he's in the pot. Respect his bets; he's generally betting on solid situations. In borderline situations, give him the benefit of the doubt and call his bets less often. When you do call his bets, call with cards you figure can win, and if he raises, make sure the pot odds and the strength of your hand justify a call.

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Playing Against Frequent Bluffers
Players who bluff often contribute a lot of money to pots. That's good, especially when you're sitting with a better hand than the bluffer. When you draw great hands, if the bluffer is in motion, you're in great shape and can play quietly while the pot is built up for you.

The general strategy against a freqeunt bluffer is to call his bets more often when you have a hand that can challenge and beat the bluffer's hand if he doesn't have the goods. You have two ways to beat the bluffer. First, you can win because you already have a better hand. Second, your hand can improve enough to be a winner. Before calling, you must make sure your hand is strong enough on its own merits to make a stand.

It must at least have the potential to improve to be a winner if the opponent is not bluffing. Just because you know someone is bluffing doesn't mean you need to play for the pot. Your hand must stand on its own.

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Loose players love action. They will play too many hands, call too many bets, and stay in games too long. By playing more hands, they will win more pots, but at the expense of giving away too many bets when they finish out of the money.

Since loose players stay in pots with weaker hands, you can contest early pots against them with lesser hands than you normally would consider. In the late rounds, at the showdown, you'll call more often, since loose players will contest showdowns with weaker cards.

Don't bluff against a loose player. It's difficult to bluff him out of the pot. Overall, a good strategy to pursue against loose players is to stick to a fundamentally solid game, playing a little looser than normal, and playing aggressively only when you have the strength.

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Tells are not the only one way you can tip off your hand. Being predictable in your betting patterns is just as bad. If you're too consistent in your play, not only you will know what you're going to do, but so will your opponents!

Poker is a game of deceipt. Your actions—betting, calling, and raising are a process in disguising your hand and creating doubts in your opponents minds as to the relative strength of your hand. One of the worst things you can do as a poker player is become predictable. If your opponents know that you always bet, call, fold, and raise in the same situations, your play would be like an open book—and they would feast upon you at the table.

If, every time you bet or raise, more opponents than usual drop out of the action, something may be amiss. You must find that "something" to protect your pots. Whether it may be a tell or a predict-able betting pattern, you have to fix your playing so you get the proper value for your bets.

If you're pegged as a player who plays only with good hands, or as one who raises every time a good hand is drawn, in no time at all, your opponents will pick up on this habit and adjust their play to take full advantage of the situation. For example, there are aggressive players who tip off good hands by suddenly playing meekly when their cards show strength. This unusual behavior often causes opponents to beware the quiet lion and drop out in marginal situations rather than meet the action.

To some degree, a good player will be predictable, and that is okay. There is always a degree of consistency in good players. But at the same time, unless you want to play like a complete nut so no one will ever know what you're doing—except losing—there has to be a certain degree of unpredictability in your play. Part of being a good poker player is varying your play enough so that opponents never know exactly what's up your sleeve.

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There is a whole science in poker devoted to the art of reading "tells," the inadvertant giving away of one's hand to opponents. Almost every player has tells, some better hidden than others. It is your job not only to seek out the tells from your opponents, but to protect against their finding yours.

There is a psychological and emotional reaction to every stimulus and event that occurs at a poker table, and a resultant physical expression of that reaction. The reaction can be expressed in some form of body language—like a player shifting in his seat, leaning forward, or scratching his head, or in a small facial expression like a twitch or tightening of the eyes, or perhaps as a faint grimace. The body is all movement—unless you're playing a carcass.

Learning to read tells is a master science. If you pay careful attention to the goings on at a poker table, you may occassionally be able to pick up signs that will clue you in to a player's hand or possible reaction to a situation. For example, some players lose interest every time they're about to fold. Oth-ers feign a loss of interest and appear distracted when they hold monster hands.

A typical tell in beginning games is a player grabbing his chips when he's going to call a bet, even though the action is several players in front of him. Another is a player who watches the action more closely when he knows that he will be participating in the betting. There are literally thousands of tells available for you to take advantage of—and guard against. Players may hold their cards differently or wear a different expression when they're going to fold. Other players can scarcely contain their excitement when they're dealt a big hand, and they may express this in all sorts of obvious mannerisms— obvious, that is, if you're paying attention.

Look for vocal patterns and tones, the playing of chips, the holding of cards, facial expressions, or where an opponent's eyes go (to his chip stack or an opponent's, to the pot subconsciously counting the money they hope to win, to other players' eyes, or at least to those of the one they fear most). Notice the way a player sits, whether he speaks more or less than normal, or louder or softer, or bets with more aggression (bluffing?) or more meekly, or tosses chips so that they barely make it into the pot (disguising strength?)

Stay alert and watch what's going on. The patterns will emerge. Finding and using these tells is worth lots of money to the astute player. Having prior information on a player's intentions or an actual tipping off of an opponent's strength or weakness after he makes a bet is, needless to say, a huge advantage in poker.

At the same time as you search out tells in your opponents, you must protect against their finding yours. Learn to develop a "poker face," so that when you've got the groceries, you can fill the bag.

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Pot odds is a concept that looks at the risks against the rewards of making a bet—the risks being the cost of a bet, and the rewards being the amount of money to be won from the pot. For example, if the pot holds $ 100 and the bet to be called is $20, then the pot odds are $100 to $20, or 5 to 1. You use pot odds to determine if the cost of going for the pot is justified by the amount you might win. Let's look at an illustrative situation to see how this works.

Let's say you're playing $10-$20 seven-card stud and two opponents are left. You hold aces over 3s, and $40 is due your position. The first opponent, whom you figure for a probable three-of-a-kind, has opened on sixth street with a $20 bet. He was raised by the second player $20 more. The second player sits with four hearts and has straight possibilities as well, good scare cards against your two pair. With the $40 worth of bets, the pot now holds $240. According to the pot odds, should you call?
Of course, you don't know for sure what cards your opponents hold in the hole, but you figure your hand to be second best without improvement. You must draw an ace or a 3 to fill the two pair into a full house, the only way you can win the hand. However, the hearts hand has one of your 3s, and you noticed another 3 pass out of play earlier, leaving you, in fact, only two live cards, the remaining aces.

There has been a total of twenty-eight cards revealed: the eight open cards of your opponents, your six cards, and the fourteen cards folded earlier by the other players. That leaves twenty-four unknown cards. Only two of them, the aces, can help your hand. The odds of improving to be a winner are 2 in 24 (1 in 12), or 11 to 1 against. The pot offers only 6 to 1, poor odds against an 11 to 1 chance of improvement. Aces up is normally a powerful hand, but in this situation the correct play is to fold.

The above hand worked well as an illustration, because only one card was yet to be played, which made estimating your pot odds relatively easy. Estimating pot odds value with more than one card to play becomes more difficult as more unknowns come into play. How fast will the pot grow? What future bets will have to be called? What new cards dealt will change your projected strength vis-a-vis your opponents? Though more variables may come into play, and a pot odds analysis may become less exact, a rough cost-of-playing versus money-to-be-won calculation is always helpful in determining whether a hand is worth playing. Let's look at a pot odds application for draw poker.
Pot odds dictate that four-card straights and flushes should be folded before the draw if two other players or fewer are in the pot, unless the game is being played with a large ante. The chances of improving these four-card totals to a straight or flush are approximately 4 to 1 against. With less than three players in contention, the money in the pot is generally not enough to justify a call.

For example, in a $5-$ 10 poker game with eight participants and a $1 ante, the pot initially holds $8 worth of antes. If only one player calls the opener, these two $5 bets boost the pot up to $17 in bets and antes. With only $ 17 to win and a cost of $5 to call, the pot offers less than the 4 to 1 odds needed to make the call a good play. The smart move here is to fold.

On the other hand, if the above game were played with a high ante, say $2 per player, calling in the above situation would be an excellent play. The $10 in bets added to $16 in antes ($2 ante per player times eight players), fills the pot with $26 in bets and antes. Those are odds of 26 to 5 on the bet, better than the 4 to 1 odds needed to justify the call. Playing to the draw in this situation is an excellent move. While evaluating pot odds is not always an exact science, since you're making some estimations and there are always unknowns, it is a useful and important evaluation tool that will help you make profitable strategic decisions in poker.

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