Sean Chaffin is a full-time freelance writer based in Ruidoso, New Mexico. He covers poker, gambling, the casino industry, and numerous other topics. Follow him on Twitter at @PokerTraditions and email him at seanchaffin@sbcglobal.net.
Sean Chaffin
's Articles
A poker cooler is a hand in which you play well but become a loser merely by how the cards hit the board. Learn how to cope with these type of poker hands.
Three-bet (or 3bet)is the third bet (or second raise) in a betting sequence. There is a bet (1bet), a raise (2bet), and a re-raise which is the 3bet. It’s worth remembering that in games with blinds, the first bet on the first betting round is always the blind post, which is why a re-raise against a open-raise is known as a 3bet and not a 2bet.
Ratholing is the act of cashing out chips from a cash game table then rebuying with a smaller amount of chips. It is considered unethical behaviour, and against the rules in many cash games. Interestingly,ratholing confers no specific advantage to the ratholer and no disadvantage to the other players at the table. In other words, there is no decent reason why ratholing should be considered unethical. It’s simply a case of players feeling bad that they can no longer win back the chips they lost to a certain villain.
Quads is a common nickname for four-of-a-kind in poker. In fact, the nickname quads is so common, that it has virtually replaced four-of-a-kind as the official name for this type of holding. It’s simply a lot easier to say that four-of-a-kind. Quads is made when we hold four cards all of the same rank. This leaves room for one kicker, since poker hands are made with 5 cards in the majority of variants.
Preflop in poker simply means “before the flop”. The flop is the name of the second betting round in Hold’em and Omaha where 3 community cards are dealt face up in the centre of the table. Anything that happens before those 3 cards are dealt is referred to as preflop(so essentially, the entire first betting round including posting the blinds and receiving hole cards).
An overpair is a pair in the hole that is higher than the highest card on the board. For example, in Hold’em we have QQ in the hole and the board texture is T72. We hold an overpair. This concept only makes sense in games where there are community cards, Hold’em and Omaha for example.