What’s a Barbara Hutton?

Hold’em players have many names for their starting cards. Players who are new to the game, particularly those coming primarily from online sites, may not be familiar with all of them. You’ll see that hold’em players have great imaginations.
Where no commentary is offered, either the origins of the name are lost in misty antiquity or the reason for the name is obvious.

acey-deucey: A-2

Ajax: A-J. Also called foamy cleanser.

American Airlines: A-A. From the logo of the airline.

Barbara Hutton: 10-5. Comes 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 were also called variety stores.

Baskin-Robbins: 3-A. From the ice cream chain’s “31 Flavors.”

beer hand: 7-2

big slick: A-K

Broderick Crawford: 10-4. The term came 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. Comes 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. 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. Some controversy exists as to the fifth card. Some say that all of the cards in the hand were black, and that the fifth card was the J. The current story promulgated by the cardrooms of Deadwood is that the two pair were black and the fifth card was the 9. Even so, the term dead man’s hand usually refers to just two pair, aces and eights, in any combination, and, by extension, A-8 as starting cards in hold’em.

dime store: 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. So named because Doyle Brunson twice won the main event of the World Series of Poker (1976 and 1977) with those two holecards.

Eubie: 8-6. Supposedly comes from the saying, “If you play these, you be broke.”

eyes: A-A. Also called eyes of Texas.

gorillas: K-K. Comes from King Kong, an imitative name for a king.

Heinz: 5-7. So called because of the Heinz slogan, “57 varieties.”

hockey sticks: 7-7. That’s what they look like. As I said, hold’em players have great imaginations.

Jack Benny: 3-9. The old vaudeville and early television comedian had a running gag that 39 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.

king crab: K-3. So called because a 3 looks a bit like a crab.

Kojak: K-J. Named because it sounds like the old private-eye TV show.

little slick: A-2 or A-Q. Compare with big slick.

lumberman’s hand: 2-4. Comes from two-by-four, a kind of board (in carpentry, not poker).

marriage: K-Q suited. Comes from the game of pinochle. Compare with pinochle.

Mighty Wurlitzer: 8-8. Comes from the number of keys on the instrument, a theater organ (88).

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. I’m not taking sides; I have not been able to confirm either contention.

newlyweds: K-Q

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. (Little Richard’s Rip It Up, covered by Elvis Presley, had a line, “Picked her up in my 88.”)

pinochle: J Q. Comes from the game of pinochle. Compare with marriage.

presto: 5-5. Comes 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 poker enthusiasts. RGPers — those who read and post on the Usenet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker — have used the term presto as an identifying catchword.)

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? Imagination …)

Raquel Welch: 3-8. Has to do with certain body measurements. (And you can see how long the term has been around, because she was born in 1940.)

rockets: A-A

Santa Barbara: A-K. Refers to a destructive oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast in 1969, the name arising from the more well-known name for the hand, big slick.

Siegfried and Roy: Two queens

speed limit: 5-5. Comes from a time during the oil crisis of the 1970s when the highway speed limit in most of the United States was 55 miles per hour.

trombones: 7-6. Comes from the song 76 Trombones (from Meredith Wilson’s stage play and movie The Music Man).

Twiggy: 2-9. Probably comes from this erstwhile ultraskinny model’s measurements. (She flourished in the ’60s, so you can see how long the term has been around.)

Union Oil: 7-6. Comes from the symbol of the oil company.

walking back to Houston: A-K. Originated long ago in Texas — part of the Southwest Circuit where players like Doyle Brunson, Sailor Roberts, and Amarillo Slim got their start before hold’em moved to Vegas — players would go broke by committing too much on the hand.

walking sticks: 7-7. The numbers sort of resemble walking sticks.

Wayne Gretzky: 9-9. Comes from the former hockey player’s jersey number.

Woolworth: 10-5. Comes 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). Also, Barbara Hutton.

Michael Wiesenberg has been a columnist for Card Player since the first issue in 1988. He has written or edited many books about poker, and has also written extensively about computers. His crossword puzzles are syndicated in newspapers and appear online and in national publications. Send reviews, recusancies, and requests to [email protected].