The ace holds a universally prominent position across multiple games, and it’s similarly one of the most popular gambling phrases you may overhear. "Ace!" in today’s English idiom refers to something good. People would even say "ace!" when they mean "excellent" or "fantastic."

Although the jargon originated in gambling, because of the value of the ace in games such as poker and blackjack, it is now perfectly acceptable to use it outside the casino tables. It may even be a little more intuitive to say "ace!" when you mean not a specific casino slang, but you are generally happy about something.

The bet that is placed on a particular game or event. Bookmakers ask players if they want "action" on a particular event.

All the money wagered at a casino, including the wins and losses.

Arbitrage betting is a strategy whereby players bet on all possible outcomes of an event and use multiple sportsbooks, taking advantage of odds fluctuations, to guarantee a win.

A bad beat is yet another casino slang that you need to know about. The phrase means that you have suffered several losses back-to-back and is usually standard fare in gambling. After all, "the house always wins" is one of the gambling phrases that has certainly stuck with you the most.

A bad beat is an expected part of gambling – whether you play blackjack, craps, or roulette, you can certainly expect to run into some losses that accrue quicker than you expected.

Overall, a bad beat is a phrase that is most common in poker, where you are simply enjoying a bit of a dry spell where you can’t make your cards work for you, as your opponents are getting stronger.

If you "bluff," you are trying to convey confidence at a moment when the game is not necessarily going your way. Bluffing is a very popular thing to do, not just in business deals in S&P 500 companies, but also when you play a game of poker, where you must read your opponent’s actions and decide if they hold a stronger card than you do.

Bluffing is considered a good form in certain gambling games, and it is said that poker further hones the bluffing skills that can serve you in real life – such as in corporate and business contexts.

This gambling slang also implies a deeper psychological factor where you need to convince your opponents or adversary that you are indeed in a good position, even though the present evidence suggests otherwise.

One of the most popular gambling phrases, "beginner’s luck" refers to the phenomenon where a newcomer experiences an unexpected streak of good fortune, often surprising more seasoned players. This phrase is typically used in a light-hearted or sometimes slightly dismissive way, as if to explain away the success of someone who may not fully understand the game or situation yet still manages to achieve a favorable outcome.

"Beginner’s luck" is not exclusive to casino games; it's a concept found across many aspects of life, from sports to board games, and even in activities like investing or cooking. It universally conveys the idea that someone has exceeded expectations at a time when the odds didn’t particularly favor them, often leaving experienced individuals both impressed and puzzled.

The money you bring to a casino or play with is collectively called "bankroll." Bankroll is a foundational casino term that you will use in everyday situations as well as to speak about the activity specifically. Essentially, you want to understand not just what bankroll means but also how it works.

There are rules of thumb for using your bankroll consistently and well, and making sure that you are not upfronting all your money in one go. After all, this is not just gambling slang, but also a key part of your gambling strategy.

It’s important to understand how your bankroll will respond to certain bet types, what bets are good to manage your current bankroll, and how you can maintain a healthy amount of cash on hand.

Refers to the money placed on a certain outcome in casino and sports gambling. You place a bet on a certain outcome to happen and get paid out based on the payout of the bet.

The big blind is a mandatory bet placed by the person who is two seats to the left of the dealer button. The big blind is used in poker variations such as Texas Hold’em and Omaha and it serves to move the action forward.

Bonus is a term referring to the extra credits that a casino or a sportsbook will assign to a player. Bonuses can also be offered at poker sites.

Someone (an organization or a person) who accepts wagers on sports and other events and allocates winnings to winning participants, while collecting losses.

In gambling, to bust means that you lose your hand or bet. The term is most commonly applied to blackjack where bust means that you have put together a hand that exceeds 21 in value.

Card counting is the stuff of legends from Las Vegas to Atlantic City. People who can count cards are mavericks whom casinos fear. A card counter can sit down at a table of blackjack table and, after a while, have an almost unmistakable sense of what the next card revealed would be. Uncanny as this ability may seem, card counting is very popular.

So much in fact that casinos have hired actual card counters to counter their own ilk, observing from security rooms and singling out suspects. Card counting is not illegal per se, but it falls under a tenuous category whereby casinos may deny service to a player if they suspect that something fishy is afoot.

Card counting is one of the most popular casino terms that you will benefit from having in your vocabulary.

Comp is another essential casino term. The word is short for "complimentary," and it refers to the free perks that loyal and returning players will secure. The term is used across both the land-based and online casino sectors. There is much that can be packed in the category of "comps."

You may get free parking, show tickets for some of the artist residences, complimentary drinks and meals, or even free play credits to use on-site at the casino. To accumulate comps, players usually need a loyalty card, allowing them to benefit from their visit to a casino more frequently.

Comps are a great way to have players come back for seconds and visit the property again. A recent study by UNLV’s Harrah College of Hospitality found out that casinos in Las Vegas tend to overdo it when it comes to comp points, arguing that casinos can offer smaller rewards and successfully lure back customers.

In sports betting, the chalk refers to the most popular or likely winner of a sports contest, whether this is American football, soccer, or something else.

Chips are the currency that is used on most casino floors around the world.

The closing line are the final odds set for a specific sports event before the event starts.

For a points bet to win, it needs to "cover" the spread. If you have cover, you have covered the spread, and thus your wager is a success.

Craps is a popular dice game in casinos. The term is simply the game’s name.

Croupier is the person who manages live games of blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps, and so on. They are tasked with managing the game and controlling the bets, as well as monitoring for any irregularities.

Double down is another great example of a gambling term that has ended up both in people’s general vocabulary and is also practised as a normal thing at the gambling tables. You will find yourself doubling down in games such as blackjack, where, as soon as a card has been revealed, you may feel that your chances of winning are solid enough to merit doubling your bet in mid-game.

Not all games offer you the opportunity to double down, but blackjack has certainly popularized the practice of putting more in your investment when you believe that you are going to win or have a much better chance than not to win.

The dog or the underdog is the team or player that is more likely to end up losing the competition.

In a game of craps, the don’t pass bet is placed against the shooter – it essentially means that the person placing the bet expects the shooter to lose.

An even money bet is a bet that pays the exact amount out as has been wagered on it, minus the original stake. In roulette, for example, such bets include red/black, high/low, and odd/even.

Face cards are the playing cards that depict a person’s face in a deck. These cards are found in games like poker, blackjack, baccarat, and many others.

The favorite is the player or team that are most likely to win a betting contest.

Fibonacci is a type of gambling strategy credited to Leonardo Bonacci, an Italian mathematician, who came up with a sequence of numbers that are followed by gamblers to place wagers. The system is a negative progression strategy.

A future bet is a bet placed on the outcome of a game or event that has not yet got underway. The bet can be placed shortly before an event’s start, but most commonly, players bet months in advance – sometimes even earlier.

High roller is a popular term in casinos. These players are a select class of high-paying customers who usually frequent games with higher table limits. Although high rollers do play slots, they mostly focus their efforts on roulette, blackjack, craps, and baccarat.

A high roller player would not shy from betting $5 or $50 per round, but quite frequently, they could be playing with thousands of dollars per individual wager. These players are often referred to as "high-stakes players" or "big players" in casino slang, and they tend to bring a lot of value to the casinos they visit.

As a result, high-roller players are showered with perks such as VIP status, access to casino credit, and better overall terms of play. Casinos may also usher them into private rooms with other players and host private sessions for them.

House edge is a universally understood term that refers to the statistical probability that a casino has over you. For example, a game of roulette will always have a small edge.

An even money bet on European roulette, for example, gives you a 48.65% chance of winning, and not a flat 50% chance, which would make it possible for you to play safe in the knowledge that eventually you will recoup your losses.

As Mark Bollman, a Professor of Mathematics at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, USA, said, odds matter. "The easier a bet is to understand, the greater the house edge," Professor Bollman adds. The house edge is a gambling term that you need to know about if you intend to play any game.

To "hedge your bets" is another universal casino term that you can use in everyday situations as well as at a casino table. The phrase means that you are going to take on some risk, but you are also going to place another bet or make an investment that would potentially soften the blow of a decision going bad.

In stock markets, the phrase "hedge your bets" could simply mean to spread your investment portfolio over a mix of stocks so that you are not too exposed to one industry. Essentially, the phrase wants to highlight the importance of balancing your risk, whether you are gambling or investing.

For example, a gambler may cover several possibilities, such as in a game of roulette, to mitigate their risk. Some strategies invite you to place multiple inside bets, which tend to have a higher risk profile, but also come with a bigger reward. By betting on multiple outcomes, you are giving yourself a chance to win bigger sums, and also mitigate some of your losses.

Handle refers to the total amount wagered, most commonly in sports betting. This is the value of the number of bets that players have placed, not factoring in any wins or losses, but rather the raw sum total.  

A hard hand in a game of blackjack refers to a hand that does not have an Ace, and thus the face value of the hand is fixed. An Ace may still appear, but the hand is only considered "hard" if the Ace can only count as "1" to avoid busting.

A poker game of Hi-Lo, such as Omaha or Seven-Card Stud, is a type of poker where the pot is divided between the highest and lowest-ranking hands.

If you "hit" in a game of blackjack, you are asking the dealer to give you one extra card.

In-play is a type of betting activity that takes place during a live sports game. You place on the game in real-time.

Insurance bet is a type of bet that will have half of your betting value returned to you in the case of a loss. The bet is very common in games of blackjack.

Luck of the draw is a gambling phrase that is used to indicate that, in a game of cards, you have secured a strong hand by being dealt a good hand or a card. The luck of the draw can apply to both casual situations, but it could be used to describe a player who has had a few good hands in a row.

The phrase is not necessarily limited to gambling games, either, as it could mean to describe situations where an outcome is left to chance and does not involve any skill or prescience by the player. You can use the phrase luck of the draw to talk about any situation where things are left to chance and where a favorable outcome would depend on luck.

Martingale is a popular strategy that is widely used with even money bets in gambling. The idea of the strategy is to double down after a loss and always go back to the default betting unit after a win.

Match betting is a strategy where you take advantage of free bets offered by bookmakers. By placing bets on all possible outcomes of an event using the free bet, you can theoretically guarantee a profit regardless of the result.

The maximum bet is the highest amount of money you are allowed to wager on a single bet. This limit can apply to various gambling games, such as roulette, slot machines, or other betting products.

In poker, a Multi-Table Tournament (MTT) is a tournament where many players start across multiple tables. As players are eliminated, tables are combined, and the field shrinks until only one final table remains, where the winner is decided.

Omaha is another popular version of poker. It is less popular than Texas Hold’em, and has some key differences, such as that you are given 4 private cards instead of the usual 2.

Lady Gaga sings about it, and James Bond is physically incapable of anything but. "Poker face" is a key term in casino jargon that everyone should be familiar with, even if you're not an avid poker player.

In poker, having a poker face is crucial. The game isn’t just about understanding probabilities but also about mastering the psychological aspects, and mastering those could be the difference between a winning and losing hand.

Can you dupe your opponents into believing that you have a much stronger hand than they do? It all comes down to whether your facial features remain impassive and do not betray any emotion.

The phrase has become a cultural phenomenon and reference, and it’s a prerequisite when playing at the green felt and squaring off against your fellow poker players.

The term "push" is widely used in gambling slang to mean that nobody has won, and that all bets are returned to their respective owners.

Payout is the amount you receive as a reward for a successful bet – whether in a casino or at a sportsbook.

Payoff is the amount that is paid to a winning bettor or player. The amount may include the original amount wagered or not.

The pay table shows the amount you would win for each particular type of wager you place. Pay tables are very popular in slot games, but you can also use them in table games, such as roulette, baccarat, blackjack and so on.

Pass is a type of bet where you are betting in a game of craps that the shooter will win.

A parlay is a type of bet where you combine multiple selections, or "legs," into a single wager. To win the parlay, all selections must be correct. If they are, you win a payout significantly larger than if you had placed individual bets on each event separately.

A pair is two cards of the same rank, usually identical cards, such as K and K, J and J, two 8’s, and so on.

As an abbreviation, "RNG" has become a popular reference to the randomness of events. The phrase stands for "Random Number Generator," and this is the algorithm that is used universally across online casinos.

The algorithm essentially tells the game not to follow a particular pattern when deciding if a combination has won or lost, but randomizes the outcome.

You will hear people talk about the "RNG" or even joke that something comes down to pure "RNG." The phrase now has a much more significant and broader cultural meaning, and this is to be expected.

The river is the fifth and final community card that is dealt in a game of poker, usually Texas Hold’em.

In blackjack, you may choose to surrender before you have hit or used stand, allowing you to return 50% of your wager.

You stand in a game of blackjack when you do not wish to take another card to raise your current point value or do anything else.

Split is another blackjack term used to denote a "split" of a pair of cards. A pair is two of the same cards that can be separated into two individual hands with two identical bets.

A soft hand is a hand that contains an Ace in blackjack. The ace can be used as either a "1" or an "11" and thus can change the value of the hand the player has.

The small blind is the mandatory bet placed by the person who sits one seat to the left of the dealer button. The bet is designed to move the action forward and prevent players from delaying the game.

The showdown is the final phase in a game of poker, and Texas Hold’em, where any remaining player who has not folded, will reveal their hand, and thus a winner will be determined.

Texas Hold’em is the most popular form of poker worldwide, owing to its large player base and multi-million-dollar tournaments that are popular all over.

In sports betting, totals is the type of bet you place on the maximum number of points scored by a team or a player.

Turn is the fourth community card in a game of poker, and specifically Texas Hold’em, that is introduced and played right after the flop.

A whale is another term for a high roller in gambling slang, but it also has a slightly different meaning. While high rollers are players who come and go, whales tend to be much like Captain Ahab’s Moby Dick. They are "hunted" in the sense that once casinos catch wind of "whales," they will seek to offer them perks so that they come and join their loyalty programs and introduce them to their own gaming floors.

Whales are also protected by casinos, and there have been many high-profile lawsuits in the gambling industry with one company accusing a usually former VIP manager of contacting whales and high-value players after they went to work for a competitor.