Cardroom Lingo

Re-reading a bunch of my old posts, I've realized that for the non-poker playing visitor to this site, it's probably like reading a foreign language. That can't be a good thing, so maybe I should explain a few terms that seem to make an appearance here regularly, but may be confusing for the casual visitor.

First of all, for the basics of the poker lexicon, Sticky has compiled quite a list. You can find it here. But here are a few things I use in my daily vocabulary that everyone may not be familiar with. These are in no particular order and are just off the top of my head:

Down: Used as a noun, it's 30-minute session in the box.

In the box: Literally, sitting at the poker table, dealing.

Line-Up: The daily schedule showing the order of tables a dealer will be pushing. A typical line-up in our room on swing shift would go something like 4-1-3-Break-5-7-8-Brush, meaning I'm dealing three different tables, taking a break, then coming back, dealing three more, then helping out with the brush work, before starting all over again. In poker rooms that have the electronic waiting lists on the TV, you'll see the line-up crawl going across the bottom of the screen. In old rooms like Binion's, you'll see a white board on the wall next to the desk with the line up hand written with a dry-erase marker. Line-ups change constantly, depending on the number of dealers that are present, coming in, or going home, and the number of games that are going.

Push: When it's a noun, it's the time of the next table change, usually at the top and bottom of the hour. Go to table six on the next push, the tournament is about to break...

Pushing: It's basically the number of consecutive downs you have before you get a break. As in, It's so damn busy tonight everyone is pushing five tables...

Stiff: A player who doesn't tip.

George: A good tipper.

Brush, or Brush-work: All the side work that goes with being a dealer. You could be doing anything from running chips, making change, picking up empty glasses from vacated seats, straightening the room, signing up players for tournaments, moving players from table to table, resetting decks, etc. It's basically the grunt work that goes on in the poker room.

Dead Spread: Sitting at an empty table with the deck spread out across the layout, trying to entice players to sit down and get a game started. I don't mind doing this, because the more games there are, the more money I make. But damn, some of our full-time dealers just absolutely detest having to sit at a dead-spread.

Limper: A player who only calls the action, never raising, hoping to see a flop on the cheap. The morning game I deal about three times a week is *full* of limpers.


That's about all I can think of right now, but my phone keeps ringing and my email keeps popping up, so I'm kind of distracted. If anyone has any other questions about life in the poker room or other terms they've heard but aren't quite sure about, feel free to drop a note in the comments section.

Mikey