Words mean things.

My very first real blog entry (not counting the place holder just to get things rolling) concerned suckouts. Big surprise, eh? Poker blogger writing about suckouts. Someone alert the media!

Not so fast, Sparky. This wasn't about a specific suckout or even a group of suckouts. No, it was about what actually constitutes a suckout.

I raised this topic again last week in a comment on Jordan's blog and thought perhaps it deserved another visit.

Poker has a lot of esoteric terminology. Flop, turn, river, top-pair, the nuts, drawing dead, back-door, suckout. And that's not counting all the hands that have names. One thing many of these terms have in common is that they are very specific. Their meaning is not vague, at least not to those who understand them. "The nuts" is a good example. This term is so specific that variations exist to explain differences from the parent term -- "Second nuts", "nut flush", "nut straight", etc. Not all poker terms are quite so specific, but many are.

Suckout is one term that seems to be an exception to this. It has taken on a Humpty Dumpty-ish air of words mean what I want them to mean. About the only thing that is definite in all usages of the term is that somebody who was perceived as being at a disadvantage eventually won the hand. (I say 'perceived' because I've seen it used to describe hands where the alleged underdog was actually the favorite when all the outs were counted.)

I've always been interested in words. Their usage, their origin, their changing of meaning over time. I've also always been somewhat of a purist when it comes to words. Words without fairly specific meanings are, well, meaningless. There are several words and phrases that are misused far more often than they are used correctly and it grates on me when I hear their more common misusage. (My friends will be rolling their eyes about now because they know what's coming next.)

The common misuse of "begs the question" is one of my pet peeves. Proper use of this phrase is largely limited to formal logic and argumentation. It has little application in the everyday world. (Look it up in Wikipedia if you're curious about proper usage.) In common misusage it is synonymous with "raises the question". I'm particularly taken aback by misuse of this phrase by professional writers who should know better. I've largely given up on correcting the common misuse of this phrase, but it still sends little shivers down my spine when I hear it misused in commercials and TV shows.

Poker terminology hardly comes from such lofty origins as the Latin derivation of "begs the question", but this doesn't mean accuracy in usage is any less important. Like "begs the question", it is perhaps too late for "suckout" to return to a more specific usage for which such a term would be justified. But I'm going to add it to my bag of windmills anyway, take it out every so often, and have a good tilt at it.

To that end, I'd like to attempt a working definition of "suckout". Even without an understanding of the poker-related use of the term, it sounds extreme. I believe this was intended by the originator. "Suckout" was a term intended to be applied only in cases where very long odds were overcome, where a very unlikely event occurred.

Prior to writing that previously mentioned blog entry I did a fair amount of internet research looking for a definition of suckout. I found lots of hand-waving attempts at defining the term, often by people who admitted they knew nothing about it but didn't let a little thing like ignorance keep them from expressing an opinion. There was very little written by anyone who seemed to actually have an understanding of the true nature of "suckout". My search did unearth one shining gem of understanding. I quote now from that old blog entry.

"Jobe Gilchrist over on the Full Tilt forums posted something which I will now paraphrase. A suckout occurs when at some point in the hand a player made a very, very bad decision and won the hand anyway. Bad decision here is used in the sense that if you could see all the cards you would not make that same decision. Very, very bad decision is used in the sense that if you'd just gotten paid after six months at sea and were already on your sixth Mojito and could just barely see your own cards, you'd never make that same decision if all the other cards were face up."

Literary license aside, I still think this is a pretty good definition of suckout. This definition provides no clear percentage point at which an outcome becomes a suckout, and I think that's appropriate. Like almost everything related to poker, the specific definition of suckout depends on the siutation. If a player is getting money odds that justify making a play based on the perceived odds of the cards, then it's a good play and when it comes in it isn't a suckout.

This, I expect, more than any other aspect of this definition, would be a point of contention for some. I can imagine it argued that simply getting the right odds for a call doesn't result in hitting a 3-outer on the river not being a suckout. But if the true essence of suckout is dumb luck triumphing over proper play, then good play can not be a suckout regardless of the card odds.

I don't expect the world to start moving toward proper usage of the term suckout as a result of this blog entry. If only one or two people move in that direction, I'll be happy. If a blogger or two writes out their thoughts on this topic, even if they disagree with me, I'll be happy to see a dialog begin. If anybody, anywhere, even once, stops themselves from incorrectly using the phrase "begs the question", I'll be ecstatic.

Words mean things, regardless of what Humpty Dumpty might say on the topic.