Keeping a poker face....................

Once upon a long time ago when I was gainfully employed, I could jargon with the best of them. When talking with those in the same discipline, using commonly understood terms makes sense. Management-speak is something else: I've never knowingly 'run things up the flagpole to see who saluted them' or 'put something on the table to see if it's got legs'. But I'll admit to management-speaking in jest and have been astounded when people have taken the clichés seriously. But I digress somewhat from my starting point: jargon. Here's a verbatim transcript of a recent interchange I had on Facebook. Don't you just love the English language?

Ms X: Some plum pushed all-in from button for 20M (!) on my big blind. I called with AK and he had A9. Obviously, flop was A9Q and it never got any better. Pants*.

Me: Ms X, would you care to translate the above into English?

Ms X: A foolish player bet with all of his money, which was equivalent to about 20 times what it costs to pay the compulsory bets for each hand in a poker tournament. I was in a seat on the table that meant, for that hand, I had to pay the largest amount of compulsory bets, he was in the seat two to my right. He was attempting to aggressively separate me from my money; money I would to have had to have paid with any two starting cards. Upon looking at my cards I discovered I had an Ace and a King together which is the 3rd best starting hand I could look at, so I agreed to call his bet. His hand was an Ace and a Nine, which made me a 4 to 1 favourite to win a large pot. The dealer then laid the community cards, offering 5 more cards to decide the winner of the game. Within those 5 card was an Ace and a Nine which meant he had 'two pairs- AA and 99' where I had 'one pair- AA'. He found his 20% probability to win the pot and won the pot. Pants*. I think this conclusively proves that poker 'short-talk' is actually massively timesaving.

* For my (few, so few, but very precious readers in the USA: Adjective: pants (comparative: more pants, superlative: most pants) (UK slang) of inferior quality, rubbish.