Frequently players develop instinct or judgment about the size of the pot relative to their potential bets in various situations and make adjustments, but in some cases it is important to get an exact count. For example, on the next-to-last round of a game when your opponent bets and you are facing a decision on whether to call with a drawing hand, you need to compare your exact pot odds with the odds of completing your hand (though other factors may be involved as well). Another situation is deciding whether to bluff on the final round: game theory shows that one should bluff a percentage of the time equal to your opponent's pot odds to call the bluff. For example, in a pot limit game if the pot is $30 and you are contemplating a $30 bet (which will give your opponent 2-to-1 pot odds for his call), you should bluff half as often as you would bet for value. With a larger pot, you would bluff less often.
Drawing
By analogy to the game of draw poker, one is said to be drawing in other poker games if one has a hand that is incomplete and needs further cards to become valuable. For example, in seven-card stud, if four of your first five cards are all spades, but your hand is otherwise worthless (no pairs, no straight), you are said to be drawing for a flush. Contrast this with a made hand, which has value already.
Whether or not it is good strategy to play a drawing hand depends upon the nature of the game being played, the size of the pot, the betting structure, and many other factors.
Protection
In poker, one of the motives for betting or raising is to give your hand protection, which means to encourage opponents to fold a drawing hand that might otherwise improve to beat yours. This is generally done with a made hand that you perceive as vulnerable to an opponent's drawing hand. This differs from a Bluff in that the latter can win only when the opponent folds, while a bet for protection is made with a hand that is likely to win a showdown, but is not strong enough for Sandbagging.
It is especially important to bet for protection when there are multiple opponents. For example, if your hand is presently the best, but each of four opponents has a 1-in-6 chance of beating you, the four combined are actually a favorite to defeat you, even though each one is individually an underdog. If you bet, some or all of them will fold, leaving you with fewer opponents and a better chance of winning.
The term protection is also often heard in the context of an all-in player, because a bet by any player serves to protect the hand of an all-in player just as it protects the bettor (and possibly more so). To deliberately make such a bet solely to protect a hand other than your own is a form of Collusion.
Value
In poker, the strength of one's hand (that is, how likely it is to be the best according to the rules of the game being played) is often called its value, but discussions of poker strategy often use the term in a more specific sense to describe a type of bet: A bet "for value" is a bet made for the purpose of increasing the size of the pot, and which the player wants his opponents to call. This is in contrast to a bluff or a protection bet (though some bets may have a combination of these motives).
Most of the time, this is because the player believes his hand is valuable in the first sense, and he therefore wants his opponents to put money into the pot that he expects to win from them at showdown. In certain situations, though, even a drawing hand that is not currently the best can value bet: For example, on the next-to-last betting round of a fixed limit game, if a player surmises that he has a 1-in-4 chance of being dealt a final card that will give him a winning hand, and there are six opponents remaining, he can bet for value even though he will lose three out of four times,
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