Poker Glossary

Cold 4bet refers to a 4bet made on the first betting round where that 4bet is a player’s very first action in the hand.

Aces full of Kings is the name given to a full house made with three Aces and two Kings.

Double up means to double the size of our chip stack by winning an all-in bet. The term can be used in both a tournament and cash game setting. It can also be used somewhat loosely – i.e. we can still refer to it as a double up even if we had our opponent covered and didn’t quite win 2x (two times) our stack.

In poker, the term ‘up the ante’ may refer to the increase in antes that happens on each level of a tournament. In many cases however, ‘up the ante’ is a more general expression which means to increase the stakes or wager. In other words, it’s a term that originated with poker, but has become an expression used in every day speech.

Whale is the name given to a very rich but very bad poker player. The meaning of the word whale has broadened to include any extremely bad poker player regardless of the stakes however. So, a very bad player at the lowest stakes cash games online could also be described as a whale even though the term was originally reserved for high stakes players only. The term was borrowed from the financial investment world, where a very rich investor is referred to as a whale.