The History Behind 7 Popular Poker Terms

You probably use these 7 poker terms all the time. The origin and history of these words is actually pretty funny…

The Nuts

To have the best possible hand.

There are two possibilities about how this term originated.

1. Back in Old West, players could wager almost anything they had at a poker game. That included the nuts that held their wagon wheels in place. Without the wagon wheel nuts, the player would be stranded and might die.
   To the others at the table, it would seem that a player would only make such a bet with an unbeatable hand. Since many games were played indoors in the winter time, the wagon wheel nuts were often very cold and were sometimes referred to as the “stone cold nuts”.
2. “Nuts” in Old English means “a source of pleasure”.

Grinding

To play a ton of poker. Usually this involves mass-multitabling in games that are typically below your skill level.

Originally, “grinding” referred to using a hand mill to grind grain. You would basically be spinning a wheel and make a couple of bags of flour by the end of the day. It was an extremely boring and tedious job.
Fast forward to the 20th century and the definition of grinding began to take on a much broader meaning. People started to call almost any job “the daily grind”.
In the 21st century, grinding started to be used in videogames. In World of Warcraft, people would spend countless mind-numbing hours to kill weak enemies and level up.

Busto

To lose your entire bankroll.

In blackjack, the goal is get as close to 21 as possible. If you go over, you “bust” and automatically lose the hand.

Robusto

To win lots of money in a short period of time.

There are two possibilities about how this term originated.

1. Cuban Robusto cigars are around $250 each. If you go on a good run, you might open a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and whip out a Cuban Robusto.
2. Robust is defined as “exhibiting vigor, strength or firmness”. Robusto works as a funny-sounding antonym of busto and the definition fits.

Baller

A successful high-stakes poker player that is flashy with his money and makes insane prop bets.

Originally, a baller referred to someone that’s very successful in basketball. Now, it can refer to almost anyone that’s rich and flaunts their wealth.

Tilt

Playing sub-optimally due to emotional distress.

Pinball started to become popular in the 1930’s. Early machines had a serious flaw – players could lift up a corner of the machine and be guaranteed not to lose. By the 1950’s pinball machines started to penalize players that tilted the machines by making them lose a turn. Some players continued to tilt, kick and punch the machine out of frustration even though it lowered their score.

Texas Hold’Em

A game that started in the South or Southwest United States in the early 1960’s.

It was originally called “Hold Me Darling”, “Tennessee Hold Me” and “Texas Hold’Em”. Predictably, “Texas Hold’Em” is the name that stuck.

Poker

Originally from the German word “pochen” which means to “to brag as a bluff”. The literal translation is “to knock” (that’s why you knock on the table to check). The earliest version of poker in English was called “brag”.

Vanessa Rousso Documentary - An Ordinary Girl

A day in the life of Vanessa Rousso as she plays the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Featuring interviews with the people closest to her, including her mother Cindy and husband Chad Brown.

Poker's Million Dollar Girl - The Story of Liv Boeree's San Remo Victory

The story of how Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree won more than one million dollars at the San Remo European Poker Tour event in 2010. Hear Liv talk you through every final table hand on her way to the title.

What Kind of Poker Player are You?

note: keep track of which letters you’re choosing to rate yourself at the bottom of this post.

General Poker Questions:

1. You just stacked your arch nemesis. How do you berate him in chat?

a. Talk shit in russian.
b. Call them a fish.
c. Say “jajajajaja nit”
d. Say “ty”
e. Say “oh trooooo”

2. You are on a large downswong. What is your excuse?

a. People aren’t gambling enough
b. Online poker is rogged
c. My raises aren’t getting any respect
d. I’m running under EV
e. I’m running into the top of my opponents range

3. You just cashed out money from your account. How did you do it?

a. I don’t cash out. I only deposit.
b. I got a check mailed after I got 3rd in this tournament. Can’t trust any online banking.
c. Transfer to friend I am multi-accounting with.
d. E-Check. I don’t want to pay bank wire fees.
e. Large bank wire. BO$$

4. What kind of screename do you have?

a. Something with characters that are not on a standard qwerty keyboard.
b. Something that sounds scary.
c. Something with my name.
d. A pop-culture or twoplustwo type joke.
e. Something with clever wordplay

5. What kind of avatar do you have?

a. No avatar. Couldn’t figure out how to do it.

b. Cute puppy
c. Espana futball!!!
d. Hot girl
e. Gucci mane

6. Who is your favorite poker player?
a. Tony G
b. Daniel Negeranu. He makes great reads!
c. Patrik Antonius. He is agressif!
d. Phil Ivey. The stone cold nuts.
e. Jungleman

7. What would you consider to be the ultimate poker achievment:

a. Stacking Phil Ivey at nosebleeds
b. Winning a tournament
c. Tilting Ronfar
d. Winning 100nl UGL
e. Making enough poker monies that you can bang mad bitties despite your mediocre looks and social skills

General Lifestyle:

8. Who did you vote for in your country’s last presidential election?

a. I do not live in a democratic republic.
b. John McCain
c. I didn’t feel like voting
d. Barack Obama
e. I wasn’t old enough to vote

9. What is your favorite music to grind to?
a. Piano music
b. Coldplay
c. DJ Tiesto (techno music)
d. Whatever pandora tells me.
e. Underground gangster rap.

10. What is your favorite tv show?

a. Japanese human tetris

b. Soap opera
c. Bullfighting
d. Family Guy
e. The Wire

11. What is your day job?

a. Oil tycoon
b. Small businessman
c. I am at university
d. Cardrunners video producer
e. Str8 pimpin

12. What do you do to relax?

a. Watch highlights of my professional soccer team.
b. Make love to my beautiful wife.
c. Take a siesta.
d. Post on twoplustwo.
e. Dankness

13. What is the closest city to your current location

a. Moscow/Tel-Aviv
b. Paris/Munich
c. Madrid/Buenos Aires
d. London/Toronto
e. Chicago/Stockholm

Preflop Strategy:

14. You have 33 utg. What is your play?

a. Minraise
b. Limp
c. 3x raise
d. Fold. Small pocket pairs have RIO.
e. What are table dynamics?

15. You have 66 on the button. A good, tight-agressive player makes it 3.5x from EP. What is your play?

a. Call or Raise (mix it up)
b. Call
c. Raise as bluff
d. Fold
e. What are table dynamics? Do i have an edge on this regular? Is he tilted? Does he check/fold a lot of bad boards?

16. You pick up pocket aces. What is your play?

a. Limp/reraise
b. Make it 6x
c. Make it 3x
d. Make it what table ninja has as my standard
e. What are table dynamics? If i limp will it get reraised? Can I make it a large raise and expect to get calls from weaker players?

17. You pick up pocket kings. There is a raise from EP. What is your play?

a. Make it like 20x. Time to build that pot
b. Minraise
c. Make it 12x
d. Flat. What if he 4bets?
e. What are table dynamics? Are there squeeze happy players behind?

18. You have 67 of clubs on the button. A good, tight-agressive player makes it 3.5x from EP. What is your play?

a. Call.
b. Am I on my rush?
c. Make it 12x.
d. Fold.
e. What are table dyanmics? Is there a weak player in the BB?

19. You have QQ in the BB. A weak player limps from UTG. A tight player makes it 4x from the cut off. An agressive player makes it 12x on the button. What is your play?

a. Shove
b. Call. Open shove low boards.
c. Make it 33x.
d. Fold
e. Make it 25x.

20. What is your favorite non-premium poker hand?

a. 22
b. J10 of hearts
c. 63 of spades
d. Queens
e. 78 of clubs

Postflop Strategy:

21. Tight player opens in early position. A weaker player calls in mid position. You call wiht 78 of diamonds in the BB. Flop is 642 with one diamond. What is your play?

a. Donk-bet small
b. Check/call
c. Check/raise
d. Quick check/fold
e. Lead fairly large with plans of firing barrels vs both opponents on good cards for our perceived range and our actual hand.

22. Loose player opens in mid position. You flat 55 on the button. An uknown player in the BB comes along for the ride. The flop is 567 with a flushdraw. The PFR fires 3/4 psb. What is your play?

a. mini-raise
b. smooth-call. plan to raise the turn
c. make it 2.5x his bet. snap call shoves
d. call down
e. flat to keep bb in with worse hands. raise a lot of turns vs either opponent depending on sizing/timing tells.

23. Tight player opens on the button. You flat 88 in the sb. Flop is 666. What is your play?

a. Contact your astrologist
b. donk-bet
c. check calldown. fold to overcards
d. check calldown flop and turn. always fold river
e. check calldown. make some hero calls on broadway turns and rivers

24. A very good agressive player opens in mid position. You three-bet AKs on the button. Flop is A108 with a flushdraw. What is your play?

a. pot
b. check. lets not blow him off his hand
c. bet/3bet shove
d. check for pot control. try and get to showdown as cheaply as possible
e. bet/3bet or bet/fold depending on how often you have been 3betting him light, and abusing position

Results:

How to calculate your score:

Award yourself 1 point for every (a). 2 points for every (b). 3 points for every (c) or (d). 4 points for every (e). Everytime you answer (d) award yourself a point in a seperate category called “nit points”

Under 36:

You are a whale. But let’s be honest, if you can afford to lose this kind of money, who’s the real fish?

36-55: You are a fish. You don’t really have a very good understanding for poker, but enjoy dabbling in cash games while you are playing tournaments with really talented team pokerstars pros like Dennis Phillips.

56-80 with nit score less than 8: You are a spanish lagtard. You 3-bet 25 percent of steals, raise every coordianted board, and never fold postflop. You are only a small winner at 100 and 200nl, but goddamnit you’re annoying to play against.

56-80 with nit score of 8 or more: You are a nit. You have learned how to be a fairly successful poker player while moving up stakes, but have hit a wall at 50nl. You are very easy to read, but often get paid off when you only represent one hand.

81+:

Tremendous! You are an elite player. You might not have won a tournament, but you are a large winner across multiple limits in cash games, and are respected and feared by both your friends and your enemies.

Guy seats at my table and says good evening, i auto mark him as fish.... is my life becoming a fucking grind?

Grinding Updates

All day in lockdown mode grinding fishing bum-hunting in my stars account. Drop by 50nl 6 max tables and say hi...

Supernova 2011

This hapened about 20 days ago but i wasnt in the mood for blogind so mention it now ;)

3 Things We Need to Master

There are three things you need to master to be a great poker player.  That’s right, just three things.

How to Be a Good Poker Player

If you master just one or two, you’ll probably be mediocre at best (probably still bad).  Some people have excellent emotional control, but bad hand reading skills.  Others have great strategy, but bad emotional control.  Identify your weakness and strengths.  Eliminate your weakness and build on your strengths.  That’s the way to become great.
Emotional Control
You have to prevent your emotions from getting in the way of rational decisions.  When you’re on tilt, you are simply not capable of making well-thought out decisions.  The logical part of your brain literally shuts off.  For some, emotional control means means setting a stop-loss.  Other avoid playing regulars and stick to bumhunting.
Hand Reading
Think deeply about what hands your opponent can have and what hands your opponent thinks you have.  Heads up is a great way to improve your hand reading abilities because it puts you in a lot of tough situations that really make you think.
Strategy
Some players are naturally very good at making the most +EV decision.  Someone can be a bad hand reader, but have good strategy.  He might assign a bad hand range to an opponent, but his decisions are good for the hand range he puts the villain on.
So where are you weak?  Where are you strong?

Originally posted by Guzel @  http://www.anskypoker.com

Multi-Tasking is for Losers

Is your brain being overloaded?

I have an assignment for you. I want you to run a mile, juggle 3 balls for 15 minutes and spin a hula hip around your waist 100 times. Unless you’re a well trained circus performer, you instinctively know that you won’t get ANYTHING done if you do everything at once. You have to split it up and concentrate on ONE THING AT A TIME.

So why do you think it’s different when you’re playing poker?

Why do you play poker and watch TV?
Why do you play poker and browse TwoPlusTwo?
Why do you play poker and talk to your friends on the phone?

When you multi-task, your energy is being spent on just paying attention to everything that’s happening. Instead, you SHOULD be concentrating on adjusting to your opponents and improving your game. You might feel like your accomplishing more when you multi-task, but that’s an ILLUSION.

Multi-tasking isn’t always a bad idea. It’s fine if it’s a simple task and the stakes aren’t high. You can obviously drive your car and listen to music (but I bet that a professional race car driver keeps the radio off).

When you’re playing poker, RESIST the temptation to multi-task. Shut off your browser and TV. Don’t answer your cell phone. Remove all distractions. Respect the game and give it your full attention. You will always have a mental advantage against your competition by playing your A+ on the zone game.

The Top 10 SEXIEST Female Poker Players of All Time

Hey guys this was originally posted on http://supernova125.blogspot.com/ which i recomend
Hereis the Final Table of Heavenly Hunnies:


10 - Shana Hiatt

Not really played too much poker. She is a presenter, but Phwoooooaaarrrr









9 - Fatima Moreira

As a Dutch National Hockey Player fitness has always been part of her game and it shows!





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8 - Erica Schoenberg

Got her bits out for the lads in a strip poker game, nice.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7 - Kara Scott

Cute as hell, mmmmmmm
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 















6 - Veronika Larsen

Shes Norwegian and shes single



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

5 - Erin Ness

Shes made less money than even me from poker but that doesn't matter, she's hot
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4 - Shannon Elizabeth

I still remember the scene in American Pie. Fit Fit Fit





















3 - Chantel McNulty

I heard she once had a fake ID to get into casinos to play poker. She can play in my casino any day






















2 - Liv Boeree

From the UK. The latest hottie to join Team Pokerstars




1 - Kimberly Lansing

 


In the words of Borat 'Wowwa Viwwa'. Cute, Sexy, Hot , Smoking..........

The Warrior Spirit

Leonidas had that warrior spirit.

Don Juan was a Spanish badass that seduced women and then beat up their boyfriends.  Even though he’s fictional, he spoke these wise words:

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse.

That’s also the difference between a winning online poker player and a loser.  The winners see every setback as a challenge that they need to overcome.  If they lost a couple of buy-ins against an opponent, they’ll go back and analyze their hands.  They’ll figure out where they went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The losers think they lose because they got unlucky.  If they have a brutal session, they just say to themselves “the jerk got lucky”.    Now, sometimes they’re right.  Sometimes their opponent DOES get lucky.  But even if they did, they should still review their hands after a losing session.  You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.
I admit I haven’t always analyzed my hands after a losing session (shame on me).  But here’s what I found effective:

• Don’t tell yourself you’ll review those hands later – you’ll never do it
• You have to get in the habit of reviewing hands immediately after a session.  That doesn’t mean you have to review your hands for hours.  Just spend 5 minutes looking at questionable situations.  Hold’em Manager or PT3 let’s you conveniently sort by biggest losing pots

Do you have the warrior spirit or are you an ordinary man?

Originaly posted by Guzel @ http://www.anskypoker.com/

Grinding Updates

Not in the mood to blog for long time... back in bloging soon with my news ;) Always grinding

Grinding Updates 9th June

Hey boys and girls...

Last days since monday my pc is a virtual atm throwing money to my opponents... Stars is in doom mode once again, i try to play only short sessions in this mode cause when you loose its impossible to think at 100% and be in the zone... the imotions shuting down your logic and theres no clear solid decisions about opps range and how to maximize our equity against them, there only "wtf? i call show me how you found your river again retarded fish" and you get to see the obvious.
Droped down to 10nl to gain some confidence from the softer field... also playing some 9max tables just to shake things up a bit in myhead... Still studying the game from my bigest loses hands still improving. For the record am down like 350$ since monday plus some cash bonuses i made from fpps.

For today ill try to go for a mega session in 10nl mixing 9max and 6max games with good table selection till i hit an 100$ day, not impossible, not easy with the cards am being dealt last 3 days wish me luck.

"It ain't about how hard you hit... it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. . It's How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done." -- Rocky Balboa

I will post my todays results graphs and charts going for 100$ day in our new poker community www.donkiez.com become member for free and follow the forums or start your own blog.

New Month

Have a nice month everybody ... here comes the summer ;)

Photos from Greek Poker Cup @ Loutraki