Those who are new to hold'em, particularly those coming primarily from online sites, may not be familiar with all of the strange names that players give to their starting cards. Of course, everyone knows what big slick and pocket rockets are, but how about Broderick Crawford and Dolly Parton?
acey-deucey: A-2
Ajax: A-J; also called
foamy cleanser
Alaska hand: King crab (K-3)
American Airlines: A-A; sometimes a pair of red aces (since the logo of the airline is two red A's)
Barbara Hutton: 10-5; from the name of the dime-store heiress. Dime stores used to be called five-and-dimes. The youngsters among you may not know about dime stores. They were similar to stores like Walgreens and Longs, although they usually didn't have pharmacies, and also were called variety stores.
Baskin-Robbins: 3-A; from the ice cream chain's "31 Flavors"
beer hand: 7-2
big slick: A-K; also known as
Santa Barbara
Broderick Crawford: 10-4; from the '50s television show
Highway Patrol, starring Broderick Crawford, who always said "10-4" into his police radio; 10-4 is part of the police "10-code," and signifies affirmation or confirmation.
canine: K-9; also,
pedigree, mongrel
Colt 45: 4-5; named after the gun (not the malt liquor)
computer hand: Q-7; from an apocryphal story that "someone" did an extensive computer simulation of hold'em hands in which those two cards appeared most frequently in the flop, or, in some stories, among the downcards. The simulation was atypical, however, because the chances are the same for any two cards of different ranks.
crabs: 3-3; so called because a 3 looks like it has pincers
Darth Vader: The two black fours (the "dark force")
dead man's hand: A-8; by extension from draw poker. Legend has it that "Wild Bill" Hickok was holding aces and eights when he was shot in the back by Jack McCall in the Mann-Lewis Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, on Aug. 2, 1876.
dime store or dime stores: 10-5; also called
five and dime, nickels and dimes, Woolworth, Barbara Hutton
Dolly Parton: 9-5; from the movie
9 to 5, in which she starred
Doyle Brunson: 10-2. Doyle Brunson twice won the main event of the
World Series of Poker (1975 and 1976) with those two holecards.
Eubie: 8-6; supposedly from the saying, "If you play these, you be broke."
eyes or eyes of Texas: A-A
five and dime: 10-5
foamy cleanser: A-J; also (and from whose advertising slogan it comes),
Ajax
gorillas: K-K; from
King Kong
Heinz: 5-7; from the Heinz slogan, "57 varieties"; also,
pickle man
hockey sticks: 7-7; that's what they look like.
Jack Benny: 3-9. The old vaudeville and early television comedian had a running gag that that was his age.
Jackson Five: J-5; from the Motown singing group
Jesse James: 4-5. Legend has it that the famous outlaw was shot with a .45.
Katie or Katy: K-10 (because 10 is often rendered "T" in print)
king crab: K-3; because a 3 looks a bit like a crab; also called
Alaska hand
Kojak: K-J; because it sounds like the old television show
Kokomo: K-8
little Oldsmobile: 8-8; see
Oldsmobile
little slick: A-2 or A-Q; compare with
big slick
lumberman's hand: 2-4; from two-by-four, a kind of board (in carpentry, not poker)
marriage: K-Q suited; from the game of pinochle; compare with
pinochle
mongrel: K-9; also,
canine, pedigree
Montana banana: 9-2. Some say that 92 is the number of the proposition that legalized poker in Montana; others conjecture that it is called that because bananas will grow in Montana before that hand makes money.
Motown: J-5; from the Motown singing group the
Jackson Five
newlyweds: K-Q
nickels and dimes: 5-10; see
dime store
office hours: 9-5
Oldsmobile: 9-8 (sometimes, rarely, 8-8, which is more commonly called
little Oldsmobile). The 98 and 88 were Oldsmobile models.
Over and out, good buddy: 10-4. In CB radio speak, the phrase ends a conversation. People think that "10-4" means the end of a conversation, but it doesn't. See
Broderick Crawford and
Roger that.
pedigree: K-9; also,
canine, mongrel
pickle man: 5-7; from the Heinz slogan, "57 varieties"; also,
Heinz
pinochle: J
Q
; from the game of pinochle; compare with
marriage
pocket rockets: A-A
presto: 5-5; from what one says when revealing a pair of fives as one's holecards. The term was coined at BARGE and evolved from what a blackjack player says when turning over a blackjack. (BARGE is Big August Rec.Gambling Excursion, an annual Las Vegas convention of online pokerists.)
quinine: Q-9
railroad hand: J-6 (Say it out loud, like this:
jacks and sixes,
jacks and sixes,
jacks and sixes. Sounds a bit like a steam train, doesn't it?)
Raquel Welch: 3-8; has to do with certain measurements of this curvaceous actress of the 1960s
Roger that: 10-4; a phrase of acknowledgment in police radio talk, wherein a conversation usually ended with "10-4"; see
Broderick Crawford
Santa Barbara: A-K; from a destructive oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast, the name arising from the more well-known name for the hand,
big slick
Siegfried and Roy: Two queens
speed limit: 5-5; from a time during the oil crisis of the 1970s when the highway speed limit in most of the US was 55 miles per hour.
trombones: 7-6; from the song
76 Trombones (from Meredith Wilson's stage play and movie
The Music Man)
Twiggy: 2-9; from this 1960s pop icon (born Lesley Hornby) and ultraskinny model's measurements
Union Oil: 7-6; from the symbol of the oil company
Wayne Gretzky: 9-9; from the famous hockey player's jersey number
walking sticks: 7-7. The numbers sort of resemble walking sticks.
Woolworth: 10-5; from the F. W. Woolworth retail chain, individual stores of which were often called five-and-ten-cent stores or five-and-dime stores (and often shortened to
dime stores).
Michael Wiesenberg's The Ultimate Casino Guide, published by Sourcebooks, is available at fine bookstores and at Amazon.com and other online book purveyors. Send rumors, reprovals, and reverences to [email protected].
