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BETTOR ENGLISH FOR HUNTERS, FISHERMEN AND POKER PLAYERS 83
saying "Mine are all blue, King high." I reached and raked in the chips.
"But I have a flush," the hostess interrupted.
"So has he," intoned her husband, "and his is better than yours."
"But he said something about 'all blue'," she protested.
With the type of patience usually reserved for constituents, my friend explained to his frau: "In poker, dear, spades are very often referred to as blue, and when he said his hand was all blue he meant that he had five spades, which is a flush. His highest card is the King, yours is the 10, so his is the better hand."
"I understand about the King and 10; but why call spades blue? We girls don't do that."
"You could have called your hand all pin\," I interjected.
"That's the color of diamonds," she said, "but spades are black."
We let that logic go and returned to the game.
IT IS nonetheless true that in the language of poker, hearts and diamonds have been given no nicknames. And with all my research, I've been unable to find any reason for this. Spades, wherever men play poker, are never spades, but spuds or blues. Oddly enough, there is an exception in this suit, the Queen always being termed the Black Widow.
All Aces are bullets or bulls for short. Kings are bulldogs, K-boys or cowboys. Queens are ladies or dames; and Jacks are bucks or knaves or hooks. Tens are casinos. In spades, then, the Ace is the blue bullet or bull; the King the blue bulldog or
cowboy; the Queen, of course, the Black Widow; the Jack the blue hook, blue buck or spud buck; the 10 becomes the blue casino or spud ten; and the 9 is the spud or blue nine.
Clubs are clover or puppy tracks, with the Ace the puppy foot and the Queen the queen pup. Often, in this suit, the exception to the general terminology is the King, which here becomes the constable. Hearts and diamonds are just known collectively as pinks.
Among male addicts, terms for worthless cards and hands far outnumber anything else. "Rags," "hash," and "fruit salad" all designate poor hands of unrelated cards. "Trash," "junk," and "a palooka mitt" are likewise. And, in various localities, other localized terms which generally derive from something worthless or rundown in the specific neighborhood are applied to such poor hands as five unrelated cards all under the 10. With the exception of "powerhouse" and "mess of gravy" there are very few generalized terms for good hands.
Terms for specific hands are rife, however. "All blue," and "all clover," "all pink" for flushes, "stair steps" for straights, and a combination of the terms for straight flushes. A full house can be a "full shanty," "crowded cottage," "no vacancies" or "everybody home." "Four bullets," "four cowboys," "four ladies," and "four hooks" are easy to understand, as are three of any such card. "A pair of K-boys," "pair of hooks," ditto. Sometimes a simple pair is referred to as "twins."
One of the most widely used and most misleading expressions of poker is "sweetening the kitty." When a