What the jargon means
Here are some phrases you’ll often find on gambling sites - and what they mean in plain English.
AVERAGE RETURN TO PLAYER
You’ll see this on fruit machines a lot. The average return to player is how much the machine pays out in total, but as it’s calculated on millions of games it’s pretty much meaningless.
CHANCE-BASED GAMBLING
With chance-based gambling, everything is completely random and you’ve got no influence on the outcome unless you’ve got magic telekenetic powers. Examples of chance-based gambling include roulette, bingo and various online casino games.
DEALER
The person in charge of a gambling game.
FORM
The past performance of a racehorse or jockey (or any other animal that races).
FULL HOUSE
A poker hand: one pair and three of a kind.
HAND
The cards you, another player or the house has at any given time.
HOUSE EDGE
How much of an advantage the house (or site) has over the players - basically it’s what percentage the casino or website takes from each game so it doesn’t go out of business.
LOTTERY
A lottery is a game of pure chance. The best-known example is the UK national lottery, where people choose numbers and hope the ones they chose are the ones that’ll pop out of the lottery machine. Raffles, scratch cards and sweepstakes are other forms of lotteries.
ODDS
How likely something is to happen. For example, if something has odds of two to one, it’s more likely to happen than something with odds of 100 to one. If you bet on odds of three to one and win, you’ll get £3 for every £1 you bet.
POT
The sum of money you can win during a single hand or a game.
PUNTO BANCO
Another name for the card game Baccarat.
RISK
Risk is part of all gambling - no matter what you play or how good you are, there’s always the risk that you’ll lose.
ROYAL FLUSH
A hand where you have the five highest cards of a single suit.
SKILL-BASED GAMBLING
Gambling where you can influence the result, such as racing (where you can study form to predict the winner), poker (where how you play is as important, or maybe more important, than the cards you have) and blackjack.
SPORTS BETTING
A kind of gambling where you bet on the outcome of a sports event, such as a football game.
SPREAD BETTING
A potentially lucrative (and potentially disastrous) way to gamble. Spread betting is when you gamble on the movement of something, such as share prices.
STRAIGHT FLUSH
When your hand contains five cards in order from the same suit, eg the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Hearts.
TRUE ODDS
True odds are the real likelihood of something happening, and they’re slightly different from the odds you’ll be offered as the house will take a commission.
UNDERAGE GAMBLING
Very, very illegal.
WAGER
When you bet money on something happening.
