I'm going to talk a little bit about gambling today and how it has influenced English and English idioms. Many of them we probably realise originated at the gambling tables so to be above board, keep your hands above board you'd avoid tricking or decieving your opponent. We talk about blue-chip stocks or companies - that goes back to blue chips on the gambling table that were the highest value in these particular games and then of course it was transferred over to a financial sector. Or you could pass the buck which was another one. A buck was a sort of deerskin counter often that was used in gambling. Gimmic as well. I remember talking to Paul Zennon about this one. A gimmic was originally a mechanical device by which a gambling apparatus like a roulette wheel was secretly manipulated so it was all to do with trickery again at the card table. We are going to talk about origin of jackpot because I'm often asked about that one and that popped up around the 1870s and it was from the pocker game called Jack or Better. It is much loke the traditional five-card draw, except in this case if the opening player doesn't have a pair of jacks or better in the first round he or she has to pass. Doesn't necessarily mean they have to be holding a pair of jacks, as long as the card they're holding will beat a pair of tens, then they can have a go. And so it goes on, once the opening player has placed a bet in the opening round, the rest of participants are free to declare whatever they want, but again they have to have a lacks or better in order to win and if noboby wins, the ante - the stake, we talk about upping the ante - goes up and so it goes on until this pot of money gets bigger and bigger and because the game was played in jacks or better, it bacame known as the jackpot very simply. And then it became associated with big cash prizes, coin slot machines and today, if we hit a jackpot, we find real happiness in life or we have a very big succes of some kind.
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