How Do You Call This Hand Again?
In Texas Holdem, you have two pocket cards and you will share with other players five community cards. And then one of your opponents is bragging that he will soon have a Steel Wheel. What is he talking about? Is he referring to his cards or is he describing a big new car? Of course, he was referring to his poker cards. A Steel Wheel is a five high straight (A-2-3-4-5) of the same suit, the best possible hand in poker. It is also called Quint Major.
Cards and poker hands need not be called by the standard terms like flushes, straight, full house, or quads. There are far more fascinating names for five-card combinations and here are some of them.
A straight is usually a hand composed of five consecutive cards. But it can be “Around The Corner” when the hand is a sequence similar to a Q-K-A-2-3 or it can be a “Wheel” or “Bicycle”, when it is composed of A-2-3-4-5. Straight can also be “Broadway” when made up of A-K-Q-J-10 or “Office Hours” when made up of 5-6-7-8-9. A high straight is the “Quint”, which is a straight flush.
A flush is a five-card combination composed of cards having the same suit (clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades), but it can also be called “All Blue” or “All Pink”. A four-card flush maybe called the “Arkansas Flush”, or (if you don’t like Arkansas) the “Big Bobtail”. A three-card flush is called the “Little Bobtail” or the “Monkey Flush”.
A full house is composed of three cards of the same kind (e.g. all fives or all kings) with a pair of cards. A full house can also be called a “Barn” and the highest possible full house is called the “Big Full”. If the full house is composed of picture cards, then it is called a “Blaze Full”. Its opposite, a full house made of either twos or threes is called “Nits and Lice”. If the hand has three Kings, then the hand has the “Ku Klux Klan”.
Quads or quadruplets are made up of four cards of the same kind (all nines or all jacks) and a fifth card completing the poker hand. A quad may be called “Brelen Carre”. And if the quad is made up of four Queens, then it can be called the “Stenographers”
Any hand which is made up of aces and picture cards is called the “Holy City” And a hand that cannot be beaten is called the “Iron Duke”. In low poker games, the perfect low hand is the “Minnie”.
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