More New Poker Lingo

In my first column on new poker lingo (May 17, 2005, Vol. 18/No. 9), I shared several new terms relating to poker. After the column went to press, I received word that the term "felted," which means to bust a player in a tournament, was coined by professional poker player Phil Laak. I would like to give props to Phil for coming up with such a cool poker term.



In this column, I am going to discuss some more new poker terms that I recently heard.



The first term is a new nickname for A-K, not that A-K needs another nickname, but this one struck me as so funny that I just felt compelled to share it. The nickname is Anna Kournikova, because just like Anna, A-K looks great but rarely wins. Please don't take offense to this, Ms. Kournikova or any Kournikova fans, it's just a nickname for a poker hand. Notice that Anna's initials are appropriately A.K.



The next term I came across is battleship. Now, this is a very interesting term for two players setting their computers back to back and playing heads up. I first heard this term when a friend of mine challenged me to a battleship match, and the dumbfounded look on my face compelled him to explain what it means. I have never tried battleshipping, but it seems like it would be an intriguing combination of live and online play. I would imagine that it's like live play, but much faster since there is no dealer shuffling the cards or taking in the bets. I also would imagine that depending on who your opponent is, it also may involve a lot of trash-talking.



Next is a phrase that I recently heard and appreciate for both its meaning and visual sense. The phrase is "circling the drain," or CTD for short. As the visual suggests the term is negative, basically meaning running bad in tournaments and/or cash games for an extended period of time. When I am running bad, be it in tournaments or side games, I often get the feeling that I am caught in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity, waiting to be flushed down the drain, not unlike a wad of tissue paper that's making its slow, circular descent into the sewer. For me, CTD is an excellent description for how it feels to be in the midst of a losing streak.



When a poker player has been circling the drain for a while, he undoubtedly has taken more than his fair share of bad beats and cold-decking. Now, many players seem to think that these two terms mean the same thing, but that is incorrect!



A bad beat is one player drawing out on another player after the majority of the money has gone into the pot when the other player was a substantial favorite.



Cold-decking is subtly different. It occurs when the deck conspires against a player, forcing that player to put in lots of chips with the worst hand.



A classic example of the difference between cold-decking and a bad beat is late in a tournament when one player gets aces and another gets kings, and they get all the money in preflop. When you're late in a tournament, it is virtually impossible to get away from a pair of kings preflop, because it is just too powerful a hand. Inevitably, however, you will run into a player holding pocket aces, and assuming that you don't get lucky and snap the aces, this would be considered cold-decking. You played the hand the best you could by getting all of your chips in preflop with kings, but it was just not meant to be your day. Now, if you go on to win the hand with your kings against the player with aces, that is a bad beat for the player with aces, since he got all the money in as a big favorite to win the pot.



A few more terms are luckbox, Hollywooding, and the boss kicker.



The boss kicker is an easy one. It is the equivalent of having the nut kicker – for example, A-K when the board comes A-7-3. I prefer boss kicker to nut kicker, because it feels like a tribute to old video games in which to beat the final stage of a level, you had to beat the boss of the level.



The next term, Hollywooding, is used to describe someone attempting to give off a false tell. A great example of this would be when you river the nuts and wait for several seconds and finally say "check" in a weak, defeated manner. Be careful of Hollywooding against great players, as they will often be able to determine when you are giving off a genuine tell versus a fake one, and they make you pay for it!



The final term is luckbox. This refers to someone who is running extremely well in the short run. Oftentimes, when a bad player has most of the chips at the table, disgruntled pros at the table will refer to him as a luckbox. Fortunately for the professionals, luck tends to even out in the long run and the bad player will generally give those chips back.



I hope you enjoyed the new lingo in this column, and I encourage you to e-mail me any new lingo that you've heard or read online. That new lingo might just appear in a future column!

Thomas "Thunder" Keller is a 24-year-old professional poker player and one of poker's young and rising stars. He can often be found playing at UltimateBet.com under the name thunderkeller. To learn more about him, go to his website at www.thunderkeller.com Send any new poker lingo to [email protected], with New Poker Lingo on the subject line.