The deal & the cards
- Ante
- A small forced bet everyone pays into the pot before the deal, so there's always something to play for.
- Blind
- A forced bet made before seeing your cards, posted by one or two players to the dealer's left — used instead of an ante in games like Hold'em.
- Button
- The marker showing who is dealing. It moves one seat clockwise each hand so the deal — and the advantage of acting last — rotates fairly.
- Hole card / Down card
- A card dealt face down that only you can see.
- Up card
- A card dealt face up for everyone to see — the heart of stud games.
- Community cards / The board
- Shared face-up cards in the middle that every player uses to build a hand, as in Hold'em, Omaha, and Iron Cross.
- Street
- One round of the deal and the betting that follows it — "fourth street" is the fourth card, and so on.
- Wild card
- A card that can stand in for any rank or suit you need. Which cards are wild depends on the game.
Betting & the pot
- Pot
- All the chips bet so far in a hand — what the winner takes.
- Side pot
- A separate pot played for alongside the main one, either because a player is all-in or, in a game like Lucky Sevens, as a special jackpot with its own rule for who wins it.
- Check
- To pass the action without betting, keeping your cards, when no one has bet before you.
- Call
- To match the current bet to stay in the hand.
- Raise
- To increase the current bet, forcing everyone else to call more or fold.
- Fold
- To give up your hand and any chips you've already put in, and sit the rest of the hand out.
- Limit
- A cap on how much you can bet or raise. Most home games here use a small fixed limit — for example "$1 limit, three raises."
- Pot match
- A twist in the Lowe-Mac games where a triggering event forces a player to put an amount equal to the whole pot into it.
Hands & the showdown
- Showdown
- The end of a hand, when the remaining players reveal their cards and the best hand wins. See the full hand rankings.
- Kicker
- An unpaired side card used to break a tie between hands of the same category — ace-king beats ace-queen when both hold a pair of aces.
- The nuts
- The best possible hand given the cards on show — a hand that can't be beaten.
- The wheel
- The hand 5-4-3-2-A, the best possible low in ace-to-five games like Lowe-Mac Raz.
- High / Low
- Whether the best (high) or worst (low) hand wins. Split-pot games award half to each.
- Draw
- Both a family of games where you swap cards for new ones, and a hand that isn't complete yet but could become strong — a "flush draw."
- Stud
- A family of games dealt as a mix of down and up cards over several streets, with no shared community cards.
- Dealer's choice
- A home-game format where whoever is dealing picks which game the table plays that hand. See our dealer's choice tips.