Important Gambling Lingo
The world of online gambling is a funny thing sometimes, and a simple misunderstanding at the tables can quickly make you the butt of everyone else’s jokes in a hurry. Sometimes not understanding the gambler’s lingo can lead to a whole lot more trouble than that, however, so it’s time for you to brush up on a few gambling slang terms before it happens to you.
Carpet Joints
To give you an example, I was sitting at a table in the Bahamas the other day and the dealer asked me what kind of “carpet joints” I liked in the USA. I had no idea what he meant by that, and you have to remember that people from the islands have heavy accents that are sometimes hard to understand in the first place. To make a long story short, I thought he was trying to sell me marijuana, and when I retold the story to my wife that night at dinner a hotel employee overheard me.
The next thing I know, the hotel manager is asking me to speak to the police so I can identify the drug dealer from the video surveillance cameras….all the while a “carpet joint” is slang for a luxury hotel inside the US. Needless to say that I felt like an idiot for almost getting a nice guy fired.
A Crossroader
I can honestly remember the first time that someone used this term in front of me; I was in the Flamingo in Vegas playing in a mini Holdem tournament with $1,200 going to the first place finisher. There were five of us left at the final table and when a break came up, the guy to my right whispered to me, “The dude in the leather jacket is a crossroader.”
Now, when you’re winning a Vegas tournament, no matter how small, the last thing you want to do is appear not to be hip on the local slang. I nodded to the guy and thanked him for telling me, figuring that a crossroader was some type of local gang member or something. Heck, then I thought he might have been telling me that because I was going to get jumped in the parking lot if I eliminated the gangster from the tournament. I was close on my guess; as we returned from the restroom break the guy in leather was being hauled out in handcuffs. It turned out that the phrase “crossroader” is an old-timey definition of someone who cheats at card games.
Cracking the Nut
Unfortunately, my story about the third slang phrase on the list is nowhere near as embarrassing or dramatic as the others. I was at a pool-deck bar on a Discovery cruise headed for the Caribbean and this guy from New York or Philadelphia kept using the phrase “cracking the nut” over and over again. Now, I like riddles as much as the next person, so I was determined to figure out what it meant without actually asking the two guys were sitting next to me. After a few minutes the two were getting to leave, however, so I went ahead and asked what “cracking the nut,” meant.
Well, some people must believe that slang is as universal as a television remote, because the two buddies looked at me as if I was the dumbest person on Earth. After waiting patiently while they laughed for a good ten seconds, they finally tell me that cracking the nut is when you win enough at the tables to cover your entire vacation expense.
