Blog topic

Concepts

Focused concept explainers for poker terms that are easy to confuse.

Flat side-by-side illustration on a pale sky wash. A bold dark-navy header at the top reads TRIPS vs SET — SAME HAND, DIFFERENT PATH with the words TRIPS and SET rendered in cyan. A thin dashed vertical divider splits the canvas. Left panel labelled SET shows a pocket pair of 7♠ 7♦ above a small downward cyan dashed arrow to a flop of K♦ 7♣ 2♠ with a chunky cyan ring around the 7♣ on the board, captioned POCKET PAIR + 1 BOARD = HIDDEN inside a chunky pill. Right panel labelled TRIPS shows hole cards A♥ 9♦ above a downward cyan dashed arrow to a flop of 9♠ 9♣ 4♦ with chunky cyan rings around the 9♠ and 9♣ on the board, captioned 1 HOLE + PAIRED BOARD = VISIBLE inside a matching pill.

Trips vs Set: same hand, different stories

Both make three of a kind, but the path matters. Here is the one-glance test, three worked hands, and why a set quietly prints money while trips have to fight for it.

Sourced from Poker Skill curriculum and the Poker Glossary

Flat teaching diagram on a pale sky wash. The bold dark-navy header reads POLARIZED vs LINEAR vs MERGED with the three range names rendered in cyan. Three vertical panels split the canvas with thin dashed dividers. The left panel labelled POLARIZED shows a 13x13 hand grid with two cyan-filled clusters and a flat grey middle band, plus a chunky cyan barbell pill at the top with the BARBELL label, and a chunky cyan BIG BETS pill at the bottom. The centre panel labelled LINEAR shows a vertical ladder of eight rounded tiles, the top five filled solid cyan and labelled AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, separated by a horizontal cyan dashed CUT-OFF line from the bottom three greyed-out tiles labelled 99, 88, 77, with a chunky cyan TOP-DOWN downward arrow on the left and a chunky cyan OPENS / 4-BETS pill at the bottom. The right panel labelled MERGED shows a 13x13 grid with a single contiguous solid-cyan block sweeping across the top-left pairs and the upper suited broadways, a small cyan VALUE BLOCK pill and a greyed NO BLUFFS pill on the right side, and a chunky cyan SMALL BETS pill at the bottom. Bottom caption reads PICK BY THE BET, THE OPPONENT, THE GOAL with the words BET, OPPONENT and GOAL in cyan.

Concepts

Polarized, linear, merged ranges: which one when

Three range shapes, three different jobs. The shape that matches your bet size, your opponent, and your goal — with worked hands and a three-question picker you can run at the table.

Sourced from Poker Skill curriculum and the Poker Glossary