Poker words, #1

I have occasionally thought about adding a series of posts about new poker vocabulary words--new in the sense that I'd write a post when I came across term I hadn't heard before. I haven't undertaken it because, in spite of doing a lot of poker reading, it just isn't very often these days that I find an unfamiliar word. The last new one I heard was in January: superstack, which refers to a player in a tournament who has more chips than the rest of the players at his table combined. I've been consciously trying to pay attention for other new terms to help jump-start this as a new feature in the blog, but had no luck.

Well, that just changed, so I'm introducing the feature, though I'm uncertain how often there will be posts in the series. I was reading in Card Player magazine today one of James McManus's delightful installments on poker history. In it he is talking about home poker games of the mid-20th century. He mentions that "tigers" and "skipper straights" were commonly recognized.

Easily the best online poker dictionary is this one, hosted at Mike Caro's web site. It readily provided me the answers. So here ya go, along with a few associated ones that it also became necessary to learn along the way:


skipper
(n) skip straight.

skip straight
(n phrase) In draw poker, a nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, cards in a series separated each from the other by one rank, as 2-4-6-8-10, or 5-7-9-J-K. Some play that an ace ranks only high in a skip straight, that is, that A-3-5-7-9 is not considered a skip straight. A skip straight is also called an alternate straight, Dutch straight, or sometimes a kilter. The hand generally ranks between three of a kind and an "ordinary" straight.


tiger
(n) little cat. Sometimes the term refers to any of the hands big cat, big tiger, little cat, or little tiger.


big tiger
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 8 to king with no pair, which ranks above a tiger and just below a flush. Also called big cat.


little cat
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 3 to 9 with no pair (in some circles, 3 to 8 with no pair), ranks above a big dog, and below a big tiger. Also called little tiger.


big dog
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 9 to ace with no pair, which ranks below a little tiger and above a little dog.


little dog
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 2 to 7 with no pair, ranks below a big dog and above a straight.


I guess I just haven't played in enough crazy home games!

I don't get how these dog/cat hands work. That is, I don't see why they would be ranked higher than a straight. All other poker hands are ranked by their statistical frequency. But surely it is harder (more improbable) to get five unpaired cards between, say, 3 and 7 (a regular straight) than it is to get five unpaired cards between 2 and 7 (the little dog), because there is only one combination that will result in the former (3, 4, 5, 6, 7), while there are six ways of making the little dog (i.e., you can be missing any one of the ranks from 2 to 7). So why is a hand that's easier to hit being ranked higher than the one that's harder to make?

Furthermore, if I have 3-4-5-6-7 for a straight, couldn't I call it a little dog, since it's five unpaired cards between 2 and 7?

Or perhaps the dog/cat hands must contain both ends of the range, in which case there are only four ways to make each one rather than six (e.g., 2-3-4-5-7, 2-3-4-6-7, 2-3-5-6-7, and 2-4-5-6-7 for the little dog). Even then, though, they should rank below straights, I would think. Look at it this way: Putting all four categories of the cat/dog hands together, and ignoring suits, there are 16 card combinations that will make one of them (four different ways of making each of the four types of hand), but only ten ways of making a straight--again arguing that a straight must be rarer and should therefore be ranked higher.

But what do I know about it? Nothing, that's what. I'm just thinking out loud here.