Google Books' Ngram Viewer results for "poker" & "all in"
Only applies to books unfortunately
From 1865 to 2008
More recent results not available [Black Friday was April 2011]


Link for people to try for themselves: https://books.google.com/ngrams

As an adjustment for more books having been published during some years, the data is normalized, as a relative level, by the number of books published in each year.
More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ngram_Viewer

I'd think that it's tricky to separate the usage of the term "all in" in the poker sense to all other appearances like "All in all..." and "All in the Family."

I'd agree that its use has increased over the past whatever years, and also think that it's silly to expect any general acceptance because of that. People have been calling somebody's bluff and buying blue chip stocks for decades.

Anyway, I'd think that the increase in "all in" is negated by the sadly, almost-vanished use of "four-flusher."

Don't forget about the original poker boom of 1595.



lol, new paged. I didn't even notice _Loki_'s post.

Four flusher is making a comeback!

I've heard it used a fair bit in a political context in the last year. Also it was used a hell of a lot by the toronto sports media re: the bluejays trading many prospects in an attempt to make the playoffs/win the world series etc., to the point that the gm responded by saying he hated the term "all in" IIRC.

I'm disgusted by these accusations OP

There are other card games besides poker and the British version of this "keeping his cards close to his chest" (vest meaning "tank top" over here) has been around since long before the poker boom.

Poker borrows pretty much all its vocabulary from general life "fish", "nit", "bet" etc. or from earlier card games such as Brag.

You tend to notice things more when you become more familiar with them. Its a type of bias.

I almost never noticed Ford Fusions on the road until I bought mine in Oct 2011. I suddenly started seeing them all the time after that.

No I hadn't

Ferrari did that years ago.

Please pay attention to your driving. I've been looking for HEMI badges for the past week, and it's not helping me.

I think that usage of brick is originally basketball jargon, not poker, and is already being used generally enough to be in the dictionary:


Full Definition of brick

1
plural bricks or brick : a handy-sized unit of building or paving material typically being rectangular and about 21⁄4 × 33⁄4 × 8 inches (57 × 95 × 203 millimeters) and of moist clay hardened by heat

2
: a good-hearted person

3
: a rectangular compressed mass (as of ice cream)

4
: a semisoft cheese with numerous small holes, smooth texture, and often mild flavor

5
: gaffe, blunder —used especially in the phrase drop a brick

6
: a badly missed shot in basketball <he threw up a brick>

So much so, then when I first started hearing people say things like "I got it in with a wrap but bricked the turn and river," I figured it was a nod to the basketball term, which goes back a long, long way — certainly longer than my time in the sports industry.

As for the OP's claim, I'd say he's 100 percent correct but about 6-7 years late. Just for fun, run Google News searches with a custom date range. Use the search string "all in on" (including quotations). You don't need to hyphenate the "all-in" as the search will give you both results.

If you run the search for 2005, 2006 and 2007, the vast majority of news links will be poker-related. There are some false positives – e.g. a story that talks about an audience being "all in on the joke." Other times, the phrase "all in" might appear on a side-bar link to a current story.

By 2009, you start seeing the phrase used in non-poker references. A TV critic says he's "all-in" on the TV show Justified. Another critic talks about TV producers going "all-in on storytelling" early in a series. A Popular Science blurb claims tech companies are not ready to "go all-in" on micro-USB. In 2010 and 2011, it's equally commonplace.

As referenced above, I've been working in sports media (albeit on the PR side, not the outlet side of the equation) for almost two decades. I became a poker superfan about the time of my join date at this site. Even back then, I'd frequently see the phrase "all-in" used in sportswriting, sometimes even headlines. So baseball GMs going all-in on pitching, or NFL owners going all-in on a draft pick.


EDIT: By the way, I'm guilty of injecting some poker parlance into my own work. Note the headline for this, a press release announcing our National Letter in Intent signing class: http://www.ucdavisaggies.com/sports/...121710aaa.html

Bump to say there appears to be a new hot poker term that is entering the mainstream media and that word is "tell". During the Judge Kavanaugh hearings today I heard the poker term "tell" used twice by female TV journalists when describing a response or lack of response (by the testifiers) that appeared to indicate a problem for their testimony.

More and more poker language keeps entering our media airspace. I find that interesting considering poker is still mostly illegal on the US internet.

I'm pretty sure poker appropriated tell from general body language study.

It is very funny to see that a lot of "millennials" who have no life experience and not a great general knowledge, think that because they heard a word all the time in the poker world, it means that word comes from poker.

There are literally thousands of words that are associated with a sport/activity/job that originated from a different sport/activity/job but have been "stolen" from their former use.

In horse racing this is a very common practise as well, mainly because the sport is that old everyone thinks certain terms come from this sport, when in reality many words associated with the sport of horse racing have been borrowed/stolen from other sports or activities.

When i was a small kid (many moons ago) i used to keep a little green book with "horse names" and as soon as i heard or saw someone speak about something which i knew was also a horse name i wrote that down as an explication. After about 1000 race horse names i felt i was a lot smarter as i knew more about Greek Mythology and history then i ever thought possible... whenever you hear a "poker term" used somewhere next time look up the term in the dictionary and you will be sometimes surprised where the term originated from.

That word "grind" they also kept using, I do not think it means what we think it means....... were they playing poker at the time ?

Same for "felt"....

They all saw Casino Royale.

Is it possible that male journalists have used the term and you only noticed female journalists using it because women knowing about poker is an idea that makes you feel weird inside?

I love that OP has come back, undaunted from his last try at this, to do the same thing.

Welcome back to 2005 again!

Sure, several years ago.

Even if that were true, which it's not, it doesn't seem especially interesting.

It's not his worst idea.

LOL. Sadly, that is true.

At the time of the last Conservative leadership contest in the UK, Michael Gove was described as "planting the knife" in Boris Johnson.

I found that interesting considering stabbing people is still mostly illegal in the UK.

Apples and Oranges. In modern times stabbing people (other than in self defense) is not legal like widespread internet poker was legal until taken away from companies like Poker Stars, Full Tilt, and Party Poker by the US government.

Don't let the fact that Internet poker still is legal in the US get in the way of your points.

Oh, wait, you're not. Well done, I guess?

Then you have to wonder why Card Player said this:

"Let’s cut to the chase. The sad truth is that the majority of US poker players are still unable to play the beautiful game {of poker} for real money.

https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-new...ay-of-the-land