Fist-pump shove/High-five shove
These expressions are basically interchangeable, and are typical of the sort of light-hearted shorthand you find on poker forums these days. Someone might post a question saying, ‘It folds to me on the button with effective stacks of 12 big blinds and I look down at A-Jo. Should I shove?’ If someone replies ‘fist-pump shove’ or ‘high-five shove’, they’re suggesting that you should be extremely happy to get all your chips in the middle here.
Donk lead/Donk bet
Let’s say you raise it up from the cutoff and get one caller in the shape of the big blind. If the big blind then bets into you on the flop, rather than checking to the preflop raiser, this is known as a ‘donk bet’ or ‘donk lead’. You’ll often see it written on forums like this: ‘I raised pre with A-K, the BB called and on a 10-7-3 rainbow he donked into me for half pot.’ It’s known as a donk lead because it’s usually a less than optimal move against good opponents. The donk leader will often lose value from opponents’ hands that have missed (whereas the preflop raiser would often c-bet if checked to) and will rarely be good if raised. Generally a donk bettor’s range will be polarised between super-strong hands like flopped sets and weak hands such as middle pair, no kicker. In some circles the term ‘donk bet’ can also refer to a tiny bet in relation to the pot.
Bumhunter
This term is most commonly heard in the context of heads-up poker. It refers to a player who’ll often sit at heads-up cash tables and wait for weak players to join, while refusing to play against good and/or regular players.
Clean/dirty outs
While working out pot odds based on the number of cards that will improve your hand, you can often separate your outs into two distinct piles – clean and dirty. Clean outs are cards that will definitely give you the winning hand, while dirty outs are cards that may or may not be outs, depending on your opponent’s holding. An obvious example of this is when you hold 9h-Th on a flop such as 7c-8s-2c. While a non-club Six is a clean out and gives you the nuts, cards such as 6c, 9c and Tc are dirty outs as they will improve your hand, but may potentially give your opponent a better hand.
CRAI
Stands for Check-Raise All-In. Often seen in questions such as, ‘Should I lead or is CRAI a better line?’ Other similar terms include: b/f = bet/fold; c/c = check/call; c/f = check/fold; b/3b = bet/three-bet.
Sklansky bucks
Named after poker author David Sklansky, this is another way of tracking your play in poker and is a good way of avoiding results-orientated thinking. In essence Sklansky bucks represent the amount of equity earned in a poker hand, rather than the actual money lost in any given poker hand. As the man himself says, ‘Basically, if you lose a hand but your opponent made mistakes, such as drawing to a flush without proper pot odds, you may lose the pot but you have earned Sklansky bucks by causing your opponent to make a mistake. On the flip side, if you are drawing without odds but you get lucky and draw out on your opponent, you win the pot but you lose Sklansky bucks.’ Many poker tracking programmes such as Hold’em Manager have a feature called ‘All-in EV’ which is very similar.
WA/WB
If you ever see something along the lines of, ‘I think you should check both for pot control and because this is a spot where you are either W/A or W/B,’ the W/A and W/B stand for ‘Way Ahead’ and ‘Way Behind’. May also appear as WA/WB or wa/wb.
PSR
PSR stands for Pot-to-Stack Ratio and you’ll often see it used in conjunction with the term PSB (Pot-Sized Bet). For example: ‘His flat call of my preflop raise left me in an awkward spot as after a PSR bet I only had 1.7xPSB left in my stack.’ It is obviously advantageous to keep an eye on the PSR when you are trying to manipulate the size of the pot, so that you can either get it all-in by the river (should you wish too) or so you don’t get stuck in a pot.
Underfull
An underfull is a full house which is not the best possible full house. For instance, if you hold 8-8 on a K-K-8-J-3 board you have an underfull. It is a situation that occurs often when playing pot-limit Omaha but not so much in no-limit hold’em.
Cold call/Cold four-bet
To cold call means to call a raise when you’ve got no money previously invested in the pot. As an extension of this you can cold four-bet. A cold four-bet occurs when a raise and a reraise (the three-bet) has already occurred and a player with no money in the pot raises again. This is obviously a sign of immense strength.
MUBS
Not all acronyms associated with poker find their origins within the game and MUBS definitely doesn’t. You’ll often see it in forum posts when someone considers laying down K-K preflop or folding A-A on a seemingly innocuous flop. That’s because MUBS stands for Monsters Under the Bed Syndrome and refers to the irrational fear that you’re getting outflopped on every hand, usually after a couple of overpairs have been cracked by sets.
Range merging
Although the theory here is fairly complex, in its simplest form range merging is similar to the idea of thin-value betting. It’s most commonly practised by betting a middling hand on the river when the board texture is such that your opponent believes you’ll only be betting with the nuts or bluffing with a weak hand. Instead, however, you ‘merge’ your range by betting hands that fall in between these two extremes, such as say top two pair on a flushing and straightening board. Because your opponent believes you can only have the nuts or air he’ll often call you with hands he believes to be a bluff-catcher, which beat your bluffs but are probably behind your marginal holding.
Effective stack
This is a pretty simple idea but if you’re in the dark you can imagine it to mean any number of things. The concept of effective stacks comes into play when there are a number of differently sized stacks at the table. Let’s say the blinds are 100/200 and it folds to you on the button. You have a stack of 10,000, while the small blind is playing 6,000 and the big blind also has 6,000. Here the effective stacks are 6,000, as that is the most any one player can lose in any given hand. The effective stack is commonly referred to in terms of the number of big blinds – in our example therefore you’d say, ‘effective stacks were 30BBs.
Backdoor outs
Often you’ll hear someone comment, ‘I called the all-in on the flop with top pair, backdoor hearts and a backdoor straight draw.’ Backdoor outs are ones that can come on the turn and the river but are not a primary reason for making a call on the flop. This is usually because you usually only refer to backdoor outs when you need to hit both the turn and river. For example, if you hold Ah-Js on a Jh-Th-2d board you’ve got a backdoor flush draw and also a backdoor straight draw.
Nut/nut
‘Nut/nut’ was to 2008 what ‘top/top’ was to 2006. Some of you may recall seeing an intoxicated Scotty Nguyen enthusiastically saying ‘Nut/nut, baby!’ at the final table of the 2008 WSOP $50,000 H.O.R.S.E event. Having the nut/nut refers to having the best possible low hand and the best possible high hand in a split-pot game.