You have probably said it a hundred times. He has an ace in the hole. Or maybe someone said it about you. It means you have got a secret advantage, something up your sleeve that you are not showing yet.
But where did that phrase actually come from? The answer takes us straight back to the poker tables of 19th-century America.
It Starts at the Card Table
In certain forms of poker (Texas Hold ‘Em being the most familiar), every player gets dealt a set of private cards. These are placed face down on the table. Only you can see them. In poker, those face-down cards are called your hole cards.
The other cards in the game, the ones everyone can see, are dealt face-up in the center of the table. You combine your secret hole cards with those open cards to try to build the best hand you can.
Your hole cards are everything. They shape every decision you make, whether you stay in the game, raise the pot, or fold and walk away. Nobody else knows what you are holding.
Why an Ace?
The ace is the highest-ranking card in the deck. If you are holding one face-down in your hole cards, you have something valuable that nobody at that table knows about. You can use it whenever the moment is right.
That is exactly where the expression comes from. Just as a poker player with an ace in the hole has a hidden edge, anyone sitting on a secret advantage in everyday life has their own ace in the hole.
How Old Is This Saying?
The phrase goes back further than you might expect. The Oxford English Dictionary found its earliest written record in a book published in 1908. But the writer and etymologist Gary Martin tracked down an even earlier example dating all the way back to 1886.
Like poker itself, the expression started in the United States and spread from there. It got a big boost in the 20th century when director Billy Wilder used it as the title of his 1951 film noir starring Kirk Douglas.
So the next time you are keeping something in reserve, waiting for just the right moment to play your hand, you are reaching back more than a century for the perfect word for it.
