early position

In a betting round with multiple players involved, those who bet first are said to be in early position.

equity

One’s mathematically expected income from the current deal, calculated by multiplying the amount of money in the pot by one’s probability of winning. For example, if the pot currently contains $100, and you estimate that you have a one in four chance of winning it, then your equity in the pot in $25. Compare to “expected value”.

expectation

1. Expected value.
2. One’s typical win rate for a particular game, ignoring variance. That is, how much one expects to win (or lose) per hour or per hand over the long run.

expected value, EV

In probability theory, the overall expected payoff of a particular event, calculated by multiplying the probability of each possible outcome by the payoff from each. For example, if there are two possible outcomes from an event (say, flipping a coin), one of which pays $2 and the other of which pays nothing, your EV for the event is $1 (in the long run, if this event happened many times, you would average $1 per event). In poker, one generally associates an EV with a particular action. One’s EV from calling a bet, for example, is the sum of all possible outcomes from calling the bet multiplied by the probability of each. Note that since a bet costs money to make, the payoff of some outcomes–and therefore the EV itself–may be negative.

exposed card

A card whose face has been deliberately or accidentally revealed to players normally not entitled to that information during the play of the game. Various games have different rules about how to handle this irregularity. Compare “boxed card”.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.