Implied odds in poker is a type of pot odds calculation that takes into account chips that we can potentially win on the later streets. A standard pot odds calculation only looks at what is currently in the pot, which doesn’t tell the whole picture when there are additional chips still to play for. For example, in Hold’em, we might not get the direct pot odds to continue with a flush draw facing a continuation bet, but if there are lots of chips left behind we have an easy call due to implied odds.

Hold’em is currently the most popular variant of poker. It is usually played with a no-limit betting structure which means players can bet or raise to any amount at any given time.Hold’em is what’s known as a ‘community card’ game. All players are dealt 2 hole cards which they can use in conjunction with community cards in order to make a 5 card hand. Community cards are cards dealt face-up in the centre of the table which all players can make use of. Once the four betting rounds in hold’em are complete, the strongest hand wins all the chips in the middle.

ICM stands for independent chip model. It’s a way of assigning a monetary value to our chip stack in a poker tournament. The fundamental idea is here is that doubling our tournament stack doesn’t necessarily double our average tournament payout. ICM needs to be used to determine how wide it’s correct to commit our chips – and it all depends on our current situation in the tournament.

Effective stacks is a term used to describe amount of chips that are effectively in play. In a heads up battle, the effective stack is always the shorter of the two stack sizes. This is because the deeper stack can’t bet all of his chips even if he wants to. The most he can bet at any given point is the size of the smaller stack. Once the smaller stack is all-in, betting is over and we reach showdown.

Drawing dead means that we have zero chance of winning in a certain situation. For example, imagine we have a straight draw, but our opponent has already made the full house. No matter which cards we catch on the later streets, our opponent is guaranteed to win the pot; we are drawing dead.

Dry is generally used to describe board textures in community card games where the cards don’t co-ordinate well with each other. For example, in Hold’em, imaginethe flop is King, Eight, Three (K83) all of different suits. There is no possible flush or straight draw, so we can refer to this as being a dry flop texture. At the other end of the spectrum, he terms ‘wet’ and ‘drawy’ are used to describe a texture where there is lots of co-ordination between cards.