Casino Glossary Q - S

• Quads - In Poker. Four of a kind, e.g. four 9’s.
• Qualifier - In Poker. The minimum value a hand must have for it to take part in the pot.
• Quartet - Quartet Pools are conducted by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club. The player is required to select the first four places in the correct order in a particular event. Fields are usually confined to 14 starters.
• Rack - A plastic container for carrying and counting coins, slot machine tokens, and casino chips.
• Rake – In Poker. The amount that the casino charges for each hand played. It is usually a percentage between 5 and 10 or a flat fee that is taken from the pot after each round of betting.
• Rank - In Poker. The value of a set of cards.
• Rated – Where the casino has determined that a player's skill level is above average or on a professional level. The player's rating may be stored on computer and referred to the pit.
• RFB – Complimented or Comped with free Room, Food and Beverages.
• Riffling (Card Riffling) – The process of shuffling the cards. To riffle, the deck is divided roughly in half and the two halves are interleaved by pulling the card corners up with the thumbs and letting the two halves 'riffle' together. This is also known as 'zipping' the cards. The riffling process can range from a fine riffle to a coarse riffle.
• River - In Poker. The final card dealt in a hand of Stud or Hold‘em. In seven-card stud, staying in until the fifth and final round of betting is called going to the river.
• Round of Play - A round or hand of play and consisting of a single or several bets made during the time of a betting event. For example, in Poker the round of play begins with the dealing of the cards and ends when the winning player takes the pot. In casino Craps a round of play begins with the Come-out roll and ends when the passline wagers are decided. This may take one or more rolls of the dice. In between, the player might have multiple wagers riding on different numbers and other betting options. All wagers made between the time of the Come-out roll and the Decision-roll are considered to be part of that round of play. In Roulette each spin of the wheel is counted as a round of play, no matter how many bets are placed.
• RVP - Recreational Vehicle Parking. A necessity for casinos.
• Sawdust Joint – An American term for a non-luxury gambling club.
• Sawbuck - $10.
• Scared Money - Money that a player cannot afford to lose.
• Session - A period of play or a table sitting at a gambling table.
• Set - In Pai-Gow Poker. Players set their seven cards into 2 separate hands of 2 and 5 cards each.
• Seventh Street - In seven-card stud, the fifth and final round of betting is called Seventh Street because players have seven cards.
• Shark - A skilled player posing as a fish early in the game.
• Sharker, Sharper, or Cardsharp - A gambling cheat.
• Sharp – An astute bettor.
• Shill - A person who plays for the house, club, or casino. Often seen at Baccarat tables filling empty seats until more real players join in.
• Shiner - A reflecting device used to try and glimpse the dealer's hole card. A tiny mirror reflecting device used by a cheater to see unexposed cards.
• Shoe – The wooden box used for holding and dispensing playing cards to be dealt. Shoe games usually use six or eight decks of cards.
• Short Run - A short series of bets o game events.
• Showdown - In Poker, the players who remain in the pot after the last betting round must show their hands to determine the winner.
• Shuffle Tracking – In Blackjack. A high level playing strategy used by card counters.
• Shuffle Up – When the dealer shuffles the cards prematurely.
• Shuffling (Card Shuffling) – This is the term which includes all types of card mixing techniques used to prepare a deck or a shoe for play to continue. All casino shuffling systems use a combination of mixing techniques. These may include 'Stripping' or 'washing' the cards as well as 'riffling', 'boxing', 'plugging', 'cutting' and other spin-off techniques. All shuffling systems use multiple riffles of 'clumps', 'picks', or 'grabs' to ensure that the cards are well mixed. The shoe games, which use multiple 4, 6, or 8 decks of cards, often employ the most intricate riffling patterns of all. In these, the packs are riffled together and then re-packed and re-riffled in complex patterns.
• Shutter – The window which covers a number on a reusable bingo card. The shutter is pulled down to close-out the number when it is called.
• Silver Mining – This is also called Slot Walking and is simply walking about the slot area of the casino and looking for coins left in unattended slot machines.
• Single - also known as a straight-up bet - A Straight bet on one number.
• Singleton - In Poker. A card which is the only one of its rank.
• Sixth Street - In seven-card stud, the fourth round of betting is called Sixth Street because players have six cards.
• Skin - $1.
• Skin Game - In Poker. A game in which there are 2 cheaters playing in collusion.
• Skinning the Hand - In Poker. A technique used by a cheater to get rid of extra cards.
• Skoon - $1.
• Slot Club Member - Slot fanatics abound everywhere. Loyalty clubs were invented for slot fanatics and members were given a card, something like a credit card. If you use your card while playing the slot machines, and also table games in some casinos, it helps you earn free points or cash. The rules, the number of points required to achieve regular club status, and the benefits given to the player differ at every casino.
• Slot Walking - This is also called Silver Mining and is simply walking about the slot area of the casino and looking for coins left in unattended slot machines.
• Snake Eyes – In Craps. A 2. Called 'Snake Eyes'. Eyes because they look like eyes, snake because they are bad news for the shooter.
• Soft Count – This refers to gaming machines. It is the counting of the contents of a drop box, a bill validator or a video game receipt collection.
• Soft Count Room - The room where the soft count is carried out.
• Soft Hand - In Blackjack. A hand that contains an ace which is counted as eleven is called a soft hand.
• Spinner - A winning streak in any game.
• Spooking – In Blackjack. Standing behind the dealer to peek at the hole card and secretly convey this information to a partner player sitting at the table. It is an illegal form of cheating.
• Spot – In Keno. Any number from 1 to 80 that a player selects on the ticket. It also refers to the number of numbers that are marked on a ticket.
• Stack – In Roulette. A stack of chips, usually 20 chips in a column.
• Standing Hand - In Blackjack. A hand which hard-totals 17 or more, which is likely to bust if one more card is added and therefore the player is expected to stand.
• Steaming – In Blackjack. Used when a player has become frustrated at the way things are going. 'Steaming' in blackjack means the same as 'going on tilt' in poker. In both cases the player has lost control of himself and is betting aggressively and recklessly as a means of turning the game around.
• Stiff - In Blackjack. A hand that is not pat and that may bust if hit once. Stiffs include hard twelve through sixteen.
• Straight Keno - The basic Keno game. Played by marking individual numbers on a keno ticket.
• Streak Betting - Also known as 'Progressive Betting'. A betting system where one raises or lowers the size of one's wager based on what happened on the previous round or rounds. There are basically two kinds of streak betting systems; negative and positive. In positive streak betting or positive progression betting the size of the player's wager is raised on the next round after a winning round. In negative streak betting or negative progression betting system you do exactly the opposite by increasing the wager size on each subsequent loss. There are countless variations of both negative and positive streak betting progressions, each one distinguished by when the progression is commenced, how much the wagers are raised or lowered, and when the progression is terminated.
• Stripping. This refers to Card Stripping – It is a shuffling technique which reverses the sequential order of the cards in the deck. Imagine the dealer took the first card off the top of a deck and placed it on the table and then took the second card off the top and placed it on top of the first card. If this process were continued until the 52nd card was placed on top, then the order of the cards would have been completely reversed. This is the basic process of stripping. The process described above would be a very fine strip. Often the dealers will speed up the process by rapidly pulling small numbers of cards off the top of the deck rather than a single card at a time. The number of cards moved each time determines how fine or coarse the stripping process is.
• Stud Poker - One of the two basic forms of poker game. The other is draw poker. Played with open or exposed cards (up cards) and with one or more concealed cards known as hole cards (down cards).
• Suit - One of the four suits of cards: clubs, diamonds, hearts or spades.
• Sulky – In Horse-racing. A modern harness horse-racing vehicle developed from a single-seat. The sulky is little more than a U-shaped shaft mounted on two wheels with a seat at the end of the U.
• Surrender - In Blackjack. To give up half of your bet for the privilege of not playing out a hand. In Roulette, effectively losing only half on an even-money bet when the ball lands on 0.
• System – Betting systems, usually mathematically based, used by a punter or bettor to try to win. A prominent factor in most systems is the criteria used to determine when the player's wagers should be raised or lowered.