Four flush

A four flush (also flush draw) is a poker hand that is one card short of being a full flush,^[1]. Four flushing refers to empty boasting^[2] or unsuccessful bluffing,^[3] and a four flusher is a person who makes empty boasts or bluffs when holding a four flush.^[1][4] Four flusher can also refer to a welcher, piker, or braggart.^[5] This pejorative term originated in the 19th century when bluffing poker players misrepresented that they had a flush—a poker hand with five cards all of one suit—when they only had four cards of one suit.^[3][4][6] Optimal strategies for bluffing or folding when holding a four flush have been explored extensively in poker strategy books.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

In media

The first Governor of Oklahoma, Charles N. Haskell, denounced President and political opponent Theodore Roosevelt, calling him a "four flusher".^[12] In the 1922 Harold Lloyd silent film, "Dr. Jack", C. Norman Hammond uses the phrase "a four-flusher" to describe the doctor in charge of "The Sick-Little-Well-Girl" in the city.^[13][14] The Doobie Brothers included the song "Double Dealin' Four Flusher" in their 1975 album Stampede.^[15] The Four Flusher is the name of an American comedy written in 1925.^[16] The phrase was used frequently by screenwriter John Hughes as something of a trademark - In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Clark refers to his boss as “four flushing” in his tirade over his corporate Christmas present, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York it's used by the mafia boss Johnny in the fictional film "Angels with Even Filthier Souls", and in Uncle Buck, Pooter the Clown calls Buck a four flusher, which results in Buck punching the clown right in the face. The term is also used in D.W. Griffith 1919 film True Heart Susie: "The Gent from the great outside world -four-flushing- even for no greater audience than a pair of brown country eyes."

See also

• Flush draw
• Glossary of poker terms

References