n0v's Lexicon of Degeneracy and Computer Toucher Eccentricities
I write about a few different things on this blog, and they don't always share an audience. The poker folks reading about variance and bullets don't necessarily know what a vector database is. The security or AI folks reading about agent architecture may not know what it means to "buy action" in a tournament. Rather than explaining every term inline and bloating my posts, I'm putting the jargon here.
This is a living document. I'll add to it as I go, and link back to it from posts when I drop a term that not everyone will recognize. If I missed something or got something wrong, send me an email.
Poker
Action (Buying / Selling)
The practice of selling a percentage of your tournament buy-in to backers in exchange for that percentage of any winnings. If I'm playing a $1,700 main event and sell 30% action, my backers cover $510 of the buy-in and receive 30% of whatever I cash for. This is how players manage variance when a buy-in is bigger than they can comfortably eat the loss on. Standard practice for serious tournament players.
Bankroll
The pile of money you've set aside specifically for poker. Separate from rent money, food money, or the kid's college fund. If you don't have a dedicated bankroll, you don't have a bankroll, you just have money you're about to lose.
BIGO (Big O)
A 5-card PLO Hi-Lo variant. Same split-pot idea as PLO8, but each player gets five hole cards instead of four. More cards means more action and more variance. Popular in California cardrooms and creeping into the mainstream.
Bullet (and Firing Bullets)
One buy-in into a re-entry tournament. Many tournaments allow re-entries within a defined window (usually until late registration closes), so if you bust out, you can buy back in. Each $X you put in is "another bullet." "I fired three bullets" means I bought in three times. The phrase exists because by the third bullet you are starting to question your decisions.
Buy-in
The cost to enter a tournament. A "$400 buy-in" means it costs $400 to play.
Cash / Cashing / In the Money (ITM)
Finishing a tournament in a paid position. Typically the top ~10-15% of the field gets paid. "I cashed three times" means I finished in the money three times across the series. Not the same as winning, just not going home with nothing.
Final Table
The last table of a tournament. Usually the last 9 or 10 players. Where the real money lives, and where the deep runs are remembered.
Grinder
A player who plays poker as their primary income, usually grinding out volume in mid-stakes tournaments or cash games. Different from a recreational player. You can usually spot one by the lack of joy in their face after a bad beat.
GTO (Game Theory Optimal)
A solver-derived equilibrium strategy that, in theory, cannot be exploited below EV — meaning a GTO opponent can't profit off your decisions. That doesn't mean it's the most profitable strategy against bad players; against a calling station, exploitative deviations from GTO make you more money. Modern poker training is heavily GTO-influenced, and good players know when to deviate. Just know that if you came up before GTO and haven't studied it, the kids today will run you over.
HORSE
A rotating mixed game cycling through Hold'em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, Stud, and Stud Eight-or-better, all played as limit. Tests whether you actually know poker or just No-Limit Hold'em. The WSOP $50,000 Players Championship is the most famous HORSE event.
ICM (Independent Chip Model)
A mathematical model for converting tournament chips into expected dollar value, accounting for the payout structure. Crucial for late-stage tournament decisions, especially around the bubble and on final tables. ICM tells you that risking your stack to bust someone is often worse than folding into the pay jumps.
Main Event
The headline tournament of a series. Biggest buy-in, biggest field, biggest prize pool.
MTT (Multi-Table Tournament)
A tournament with enough entrants to fill multiple tables, with players consolidated as people bust out. Most poker tournaments you see on TV are MTTs.
NLH (No-Limit Hold'em)
The default. Two hole cards, five community cards, bet anything you want at any time. The tournament standard and the game most people mean when they say "poker." Also the one in every movie.
Player of the Series (POS) Points
Points awarded for cashing in tournaments during a poker series, usually scaled by finishing position and field size. Players accumulate POS points across the series, with leaderboard rewards (cash, swag, side bets) at the end. The hunt for POS points is how a casual series turns into "I should probably stop firing bullets."
PLO (Pot-Limit Omaha)
A four-card variant where each player is dealt four hole cards and must use exactly two of them, combined with three community cards, to make a hand. Bets are capped at the size of the pot. More cards means more equities run close together, which means more action and more variance than No-Limit Hold'em.
PLO8 (Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo / Omaha Eight-or-Better)
PLO with a split pot. Half goes to the best high hand, half to the best qualifying low (any five unpaired cards eight or lower). If no one qualifies for low, the high hand scoops. Tighter starting hand requirements than straight PLO.
Ring Event
A WSOP Circuit tournament. Winners receive a WSOP Circuit ring (vs. the bracelet you get for winning a main WSOP event in Vegas). Ring events are the smaller, regional cousin of the bracelet events.
Starting Stack
The number of chips you start a tournament with. A deeper starting stack gives more room for play; a shorter starting stack means quicker decisions and more variance.
Stuck
Down money. The opposite of being up. "I was stuck $400" means you lost $400. "More stuck than usual" means it was a worse-than-usual session. Polite poker speak for losing.
Triple Draw (Lowball)
A draw poker variant where the lowest hand wins, and players get three drawing rounds. Variants include 2-7 Triple Draw and A-5 Triple Draw, depending on whether the deuce or the ace plays low. A great game to learn in tournaments because the buy-in caps your damage.
Turbo
A tournament with shorter blind levels (often 15-20 minutes vs. 40-60). Faster, more variance, less skill edge. Late-night degen fuel.
Variance
The mathematical reality that even good decisions can produce bad outcomes in the short run. In poker, variance is the difference between your expected results and your actual results. Long-term winners are players who play through variance without changing their decisions. Tilt is what happens when variance wins the argument.
WSOP / WSOPC
The World Series of Poker (annual summer series in Las Vegas, where bracelets are awarded) and the WSOP Circuit (year-round regional series, where rings are awarded).
Computer Touching
Embedding
A numerical representation of text, images, or other data as a high-dimensional vector. Similar concepts produce similar vectors. How modern AI does "semantic similarity."
IOC (Indicator of Compromise)
An artifact observed on a network or system that suggests an intrusion. Could be a file hash, IP address, domain, registry key, anything that signals something bad is happening or has happened.
OSINT (Open Source Intelligence)
Intelligence gathered from publicly available sources. Not "open source" in the software sense; "open" as in "anyone can access it." Social media, public records, search engines, leaked databases that have escaped into the wild. The opposite of HUMINT (human intelligence) or SIGINT (signals intelligence).
TTP (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures)
A way of describing how an adversary operates, rather than just what they used. An IP address can change overnight; a TTP is harder to swap out. Detection engineering at the TTP level is more durable than detection at the indicator level.
Vector Database
A database optimized for storing and searching high-dimensional vectors (embeddings). Used heavily in AI applications for semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, ChromaDB are examples. Different from a traditional relational database in that you're searching by similarity, not by exact match.
AI & Agents
Agent
An LLM equipped with tools and a goal, capable of taking actions in a loop until the goal is met. Different from a chatbot in that the agent decides what to do next, not just what to say. When I refer to my agents (Tuvok, B'Elanna, etc.), I mean specialized sub-agents that DAx delegates to.
CLAUDE.md
The file Claude Code reads at session start to understand the project, the operator, and the rules of engagement. Think of it as the standing orders. Other agentic coding tools have their own variants — AGENTS.md is a cross-tool spec adopted by Codex and Gemini CLI, and tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot maintain their own instruction files. See Meet DAx for what mine looks like.
Context Window
The total amount of text an LLM can consider at once, measured in tokens. Bigger context windows let you load more of a codebase, more documents, more history. But more context is not always better; signal-to-noise still matters.
Hook
In Claude Code, a script that fires automatically on specific events (user prompt submitted, session ended, tool used, etc.). Hooks let you inject context, run automation, or enforce policies without manually invoking anything. See the hooks documentation for the full event list.
LLM (Large Language Model)
The neural network underneath all of this. GPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, etc. A model trained on huge amounts of text that predicts the next token given the prior context. Everything else (agents, tools, RAG) is scaffolding around the LLM.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
An open protocol for connecting AI models to external tools and data sources. Think of it as a plugin system for LLMs. Useful, but each MCP server adds context overhead, so use them deliberately. See Claude Code's MCP docs for integration details.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
The pattern of retrieving relevant context (usually from a vector database) and feeding it to an LLM along with the user's question. Lets the model answer with knowledge it wasn't trained on, like your private notes or current documentation.
Skill
In Claude Code, a structured set of instructions and resources an agent can invoke for a specific task. Different from a tool: a skill bundles instructions, examples, and references; a tool is a single callable function. See the skills documentation for the spec.
Sub-agent
A specialized agent invoked by a parent agent to handle a domain-specific task. My sub-agents (Tuvok, B'Elanna, Garak, etc.) handle security review, adversarial critique, threat intel, and so on. DAx orchestrates them so I don't have to context-switch manually. See the sub-agents documentation for how to define your own.