Poker Betting Terms: Donk Bet, EV, VPIP and Rake
A donk bet is a bet made into the previous street's aggressor by a player who did not raise preflop or was not the last aggressor on the prior street. Expected value, or EV, is the average amount a player expects to win or lose from a decision if repeated many times. VPIP, short for voluntarily put money in pot, shows the percentage of hands a player enters voluntarily.
PFR, or preflop raise, tracks how often a player raises before the flop rather than calling. A value bet is a bet placed with a hand expected to be called by worse hands more often than better ones. Rake is the fee a cardroom or poker site collects from each pot or buy-in for hosting the game.
This entry defines each term in the poker terms betting vocabulary as a standalone word, separate from when or why a player would use it. Readers who already know the legal actions at the table, such as checking, calling, and raising, and want the jargon layer that sits on top of those actions will find it here.
Donk Bet
A donk bet occurs when a player who called, rather than raised, on a previous street, or who was not the aggressor, leads out with a bet on the next street before the previous aggressor has acted.
The term applies strictly to the sequencing of the action, not to the quality of the hand behind it. If Player A raises preflop and Player B calls, then Player B bets first on the flop, that flop bet is a donk bet by definition, regardless of hand strength. For guidance on when this line makes strategic sense, see position and betting strategy.
Expected Value (EV)
Expected value, or poker term ev, is a mathematical measure of a decision's long-run profitability across many repetitions.
Poker players write results as +EV or -EV to describe whether a call, bet, or fold is expected to gain or lose money over time, independent of any single outcome. A hand can lose money in the moment and still be a +EV decision, and a hand can win money while being a -EV decision.
VPIP and PFR
VPIP, or poker term vpip, measures the share of dealt hands in which a player chooses to put money into the pot through a call or a raise, excluding forced blinds.
A higher VPIP indicates a looser range of starting hands, while a lower VPIP indicates a tighter, more selective range. PFR, standing for preflop raise, is a related statistic that isolates how often a player raises before the flop rather than merely calling. Tracking software commonly displays the two side by side, since the gap between them reveals how often a player enters a pot passively versus aggressively. A VPIP of 22 paired with a PFR of 18, for instance, describes a player who raises most hands they play rather than limping in.
See Also
Calling
Calling means matching the current bet amount without increasing it, keeping the hand alive without raising the stakes further. The term is a basic action available whenever a bet has already been made. Calling differs from checking, only available with no outstanding bet, and from raising, which increases the amount others must match.
Value Bet
A poker term value bet is a wager sized and timed so that hands worse than the bettor's are statistically more likely to call than hands better than the bettor's.
The term stands opposite to a bluff, where a bet is made expecting worse hands to fold and better hands to call less often. Both bet types use the same physical action, but the label describes intent and expected calling range, not the cards themselves.
Rake
Rake, sometimes referred to through poker terms for betting costs, is the commission a poker room or cardroom takes from cash game pots or tournament buy-ins in exchange for hosting the game.
Cash game rake is typically calculated as a percentage of the pot up to a set cap, while tournament rake is usually a flat fee added to the buy-in, often shown as a plus figure, for example a $100+$9 tournament. Rake structures vary by cardroom and stake level, and the total amount raked affects a player's long-run win rate. For the legality of the actions that generate a rakeable pot, see betting rules.
| Term | What It Measures | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Donk Bet | Bet order relative to prior street's aggressor | Betting pattern |
| EV (Expected Value) | Long-run average profit or loss of a decision | Statistic |
| VPIP | Percent of hands entered voluntarily | Player tendency stat |
| PFR | Percent of hands raised preflop | Player tendency stat |
| Value Bet | Bet intended to be called by worse hands | Betting pattern |
| Rake | Fee taken from the pot or buy-in by the house | Cost of play |
Reading the Numbers Together
These terms form the statistical and descriptive vocabulary layer that sits above the basic legal actions of a poker hand. VPIP and PFR describe tendencies across many hands, EV describes the worth of a single decision, and donk bet and value bet describe specific betting patterns within one hand. Rake, however, describes the cost of playing rather than a decision made at the table. Consult the site's full glossary for related terms not covered here. For the formal reference treatment of this material, see Wikipedia's glossary of poker terms.