intermediate
Grinder
A grinder is a player who makes money by playing a lot of hands and winning small amounts at low and medium stakes. Grinders rely on discipline, volume and a steady, sound style, not on big hands or big bluffs.
Grinding
Grinding is playing in a style with minimal risk and modest gains over a long period of time.
Guarantee
A guarantee is a guaranteed prize pool for a tournament, set by the poker room that hosts the event. If not enough players enter, the room pays the difference.
Hand History (HH)
A hand history is a record of everything that happened in a poker hand: the cards, the players, the stack sizes and every action. Online sites generate hand histories automatically, and players also write them out to discuss a hand.
Hand-for-Hand
Hand-for-hand is a tournament procedure used near the money bubble, in which every table plays one hand at a time and waits for the other tables to finish before starting the next hand. It prevents players from stalling to reach the money.
Heads‑Up Display (HUD)
A heads-up display, or HUD, is software that shows statistics about your opponents on the table in real time while you play online poker. The numbers come from hand histories and show how often a player raises, folds and calls.
Hero Call
A hero call is a call with a weak or marginal hand, based on the belief that the opponent is bluffing. The caller has no strong hand, but trusts a read and pays to see whether it is right.
Hero Fold
A hero fold is a fold with a very strong hand, usually top pair or better, because you believe the opponent has an even stronger hand. It is the opposite of a hero call, and takes discipline.
Hi‑Lo
Hi-lo is the name for poker games in which the pot is split between the best high hand and the best qualifying low hand. If one player has both the best high and the best low, he wins the whole pot. The best-known examples are Omaha hi-lo and seven-card stud hi-lo.
High Limit
High limit describes a game in which the amounts wagered are high. What counts as high depends on the room.
High Roller
A high roller is a player who plays at very high stakes. The word is also used for tournaments with very high buy-ins, usually $25,000 or more.
High‑Low
High-low, also called hi-lo, is a format in which the pot is divided between the highest and lowest ranking hands at showdown. Common high-low games are Omaha and seven-card stud.
High‑Low Split
A high-low split game is a game in which half of the pot goes to the highest-ranking poker hand and half goes to the lowest-ranking hand.
High‑Stakes
High stakes are the biggest betting levels in poker. Online, cash games at $5/$10 and up are considered high stakes, and in live rooms the label applies to games above about $10/$25.
Hit and Run
Hit and run means leaving a cash game right after winning a big pot, without giving the others a chance to win their money back. It is legal but is considered bad etiquette.
HM2
HM2 is short for Hold'em Manager 2, a poker software program that records hand histories and shows statistics about your own play and your opponents'. It also provides a heads-up display for online play.
Hold’em Manager
Hold'em Manager is a poker software program that stores hand histories from online games and shows statistics about your play and your opponents'. It is one of the most widely used tracking programs.
Hollywood
To Hollywood is to act or talk in an exaggerated way to encourage a specific reaction from an opponent. It is often used for deceptive acting, such as pretending to have a hard decision.
Home Run Hitter
A home run hitter is a player who makes risky calls and wins. He takes long shots, hoping for a big hit, and sometimes they come in.
HORSE
HORSE is a mixed game that rotates through five poker variants: Hold'em, Omaha hi-lo, Razz, seven-card stud and seven-card stud hi-lo (eight or better). It is usually played with fixed limits, and the letters of its name are the first letters of the games.
Horsing
Horsing is the habit of passing a small amount of money to another player after winning a pot. It is also called scooting.
Hot Seat
A hot seat is a seat in a poker game where the players have had winning hands, so it looks lucky. Players may want to sit there.
HUSNG
HUSNG is short for heads-up sit and go, a tournament for two players that starts as soon as both have registered. The winner takes the whole prize pool, after the site's fee.
Hyper Turbo
Hyper turbo is a very fast tournament format in which the blinds rise rapidly, sometimes every three minutes. Stacks are small compared with the blinds, so most of the play is short-stacked.
Ice
Ice is slang for a cold deck, a deck in which the cards have been arranged secretly by a cheater.
If
If is an older name for Gambler's Last Charge, a home poker game with five hand cards, five table cards and a wild-card rule set by the final table card.
Image
Image is how a player is seen by others, as an indicator of the playing style that he is likely to use. Someone who folds a lot has a tight image, and someone who plays many hands has a loose image.
Implied Odds
Implied odds are the odds that include the money you may win on later streets if you hit your draw. They allow a call that looks bad on the current pot odds alone to be profitable.
In the Middle
In the middle has two meanings. It can mean a player who acts after some players but before others, or it can mean the pot, which is the money in the middle of the table. It can also mean posting the blind out of turn.
Indexing
Indexing is a cheater's technique to mark cards with a fingernail or a device, so that the cards can be recognized later. It is a form of marking cards.
Indirect Bet
An indirect bet is a bet or raise made by an opponent for a player who is sandbagging a strong hand. The player with the strong hand lets someone else put in the money.
Induce
To induce is to try to get an opponent to bet or raise by checking or by making a small bet. The aim is to make them put more money into the pot, often when they have a weaker hand.