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Poker Terms Commonly Used in the English Language

Poker is a group of card games that originated in the United States. What brings the many different poker variants together is the fact that poker games all share certain traits, such as hand rankings, betting rules, and the fact that a person can win the pot simply by bluffing through their hand. Poker has been a part of the American frontier culture, and has continued to grow, develop, and be immensely popular throughout the eighteenth century, and well into today. This particular family of card games has been played by millions of people from all walks of life, and today, poker terms freely pepper the English language idiom, and people use those poker terms, frequently without even knowing their origin.

The term "wild card," for example, can refer to an unexpected factor that is not completely defined, but has the ability to complete a unit of any kind because of its flexibility. The term has been used for sports, in politics, and in many other fields, but its origins lie in poker. In poker, the wild card is a card, or sometimes it is a group of cards, that can complete a hand. There are two ways to play a wild card, depending on the poker game in being played. The first kind is to play a wild card "fully wild." When a wild card is played this way, it is possible for a person to have five of a kind, which would be the best possible hand a person can have with a wild card. Fully wild, if a player has a natural pair and a wild card, the person can now have three of a kind in their hand. The other way to play a wild card is called "bug" if a person plays a bugged wild card, this card usually defined as an ace, unless it has been designated to complete a particular hand. Then, the wild card can be any card, as long as the hand is completed.

"Passing the buck" is another poker term that has managed to find its way into conventional English language. It generally means to pass on a task to the next person. In a casual game of poker, the person designated as the dealer for that particular hand has a marker -usually a white chip- that is called the buck. After a particular hand, the buck is passed on clockwise, to the next person. This person now has the task of shuffling and dealing the cards.