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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Jan 12, 2008

Everything Needs A Name

Dictionaries are great. They provide definitions for almost every conceivable part of speech in existence, from adjectives to pronouns, and that's without regard to physicality. They create a place that can be used to help take the guess work out of reading (or listening or viewing), and generally this sedentary but (slowly) ever-changing place keeps track of the evolution of language.

Most people don't think about dictionaries unless they need a definition, or unless the people who publish the major lexicons get a lot of press because they reveal some of the new words added to their revised editions.

The folks at the dictionary's web site claim new words become acceptable because people use them a lot. I'm not so sure that's entirely trueŃbut this is suspicion on my part. For instance, the eleventh edition of Oxford Dictionary included among its new words crunk, twonk and upskill, and I can't recall using any of them, ever! But I've heard (and used often) the terms hold'em, rivered and suckout much more often than the other three.

Well, shoot, you Google crunk and you get 5,110,000 potential hits; search for hold'em and you end up with 29,600,000. Big difference in usage there, wouldn't you say?

Now the same doesn't hold true for rivered and suckout. A search for the former reveals only 69,500, some of which refer to the root word river and mean watery, while the latter returns an amazing 92,100, with nearly every one (okay, I didn't go beyond the first four pages) referring to poker! (Well, suck out Đ two words -- does get mention but it's just not the same, is it?)

I'm not sure we as poker players care whether or not some stuffy old dictionary explains the colorful terms of our favorite game. After all, if we play long enough, we're sure to hear them all in context, which allows us to figure out the definition pretty fast.

Maybe we won't know the origin of bellybuster, but who cares where it came from? We don't need no stinkin' dictionary. We know what it means, don't we?

Then again, let's stop and think about this unique language we've created over the years to accompany poker. With so many college kids itching to get into action, maybe we best mess with the minds of those young, impressionable students of perfect language and grammar. Maybe we should start a campaign to stop using the most commonly uttered table terms and create new phraseology. So, just in case the upstarts who are gunning for all the money in the pot don't learn to much.

Yes, I like this idea. Here are some of my off-the-cuff words. Most of them are verbs or forms of verbs because poker, after all, is an action game.

Bronson: To intimidate or be intimidated into mucking the best hand by poker celebrity. (He had the straight but he was up against Dan Harrington and got brunsoned.)

Hansen: To take a totally worthless hand to the river and with steely, cold eyes, force a short stack to fold. (When the ace came on the river, John pushed all his chips in without hesitation; his opponent folded middle pair and all John had was a king-high. He really hansened that one!)

Tilley: (I think most of us will get this one and don't even have to be told her first name is Jennifer.) To be so distracted you lose track of your game. (When the cocktail waitress bent down to put a bottle of water on the table, he got tillied and bet out of turn.)

Ivey: Peering silently, menacingly for a long time from beneath the brow. (When Jack raised, Rose gave him an ivey then pushed all in.)

Slim: To con someone using grace, charm, and confidence even when the proposition seems too idiotic. (She got slimmed into trading her loft condo above the Strip for some swamp land in Montana.)

Susie: To display your love for poker by wearing card-related clothing. (Look at her. She never won a tournament but she sure knows how to susie.)

Ferguson (Chris Ferguson): To calculate the odds of any situation within seconds. (He wanted to know what her chances were on the turn but couldn't figure it fast enough. He just couldn't ferguson.)

This is just a start. I'm hoping over the next few weeks readers will contribute their own definitions. I'll add them to the New Poker Dictionary and as soon as I have enough, I'll put them in book form. I'll give credit if you ask for it but otherwise, I'll marcus you (as in Richard Marcus of Dirty Poker fame).