Jessie asked:
A faint heart never filled a spade flush.
A faint heart never filled a spade flush.
I’m guessing it means a faint heart ( hearts as in the card and heart as in the person,,, like and bad bluffer,,,,,) never filled a spade flush,,,,,,, meaning if your a bad bluffer you wont win the hand??????? am I wrong
Mildred
Basically, you need a lot of guts to draw to a straight.
It is a double entendre, but not a great one.
A flush is a poker hand in which all the cards are of the same suit: all hearts, all spades, all clubs, or all diamonds. Because they are all of the same suit, no two can have the same denomination, so no pairs are possible.
In draw poker, you discard a certain number of cards–normally one or two–and replace them with a like number of new cards in an attempt to improve your hand. Most poker players build on their pairs. If you have, for example, the King of Diamonds and the King of Clubs, you would ordinarily throw away the other three cards and try to get a third King. Three Kings is a pretty good hand.
As an alternative, if the other three cards were, say, the Seven, Eight, and Jack of Spades, it would also be possible to throw away the Kings and try to draw two more Spades, since a flush, five Spades, is a much better hand than three of a kind.
The problem with trying to “fill a flush” is that if you fail to get two more spades by getting, say, a Heart, then your hand is usually worthless, because you are trying to improve a hand without a single pair in it. Thus, only a very bold poker player would throw away a pair to try to fill a flush, or…
“A faint heart never filled a spade flush.”
It’s a play on the expression “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady,” which means that a man who is too shy to court a woman will never get her love. Similarly, a player who is afraid to draw to a four-card flush will never get the fifth card to complete the flush. (The fact that “heart” has another meaning in a card game is what makes the line witty.)