You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

During the President's press conference the other night, he used the poker term "show your cards" to indicate that U.N. members should be forced to reveal their true position on disarming Iraq (and, peripherally, the utility of the United Nations). As an amateur linguist, I'm always on the lookout for words and phrases that pop up in the American vernacular. Bush's gambling reference sent me scurrying to my copy of "The Story of English" from the PBS series, and I faithfully re-typed this section:

The French origins of poker – present in usages like ace and deuce – were soon forgotten, especially when the Westerners evolved into their own varient, stud poker (one card down, the other cards up). As the wild men of the West carried the game far and wide, so phrases like put up or shut up, I'll call your bluff, and passing the buck entered the language. (The buck was the buck-horned-handled knife placed in front of the dealer and passed by a player who did not care to deal the next hand.) Deal itself, as word with a long pedigree, now acquired a whole new resonance, spawning a family of phrases, from square deal to new deal, to fair deal to raw deal and big deal! Once the cards had been dealt, the quality of bluffing became an important factor in the game. By the middle of the century, bluff was synonymous with poker, and the best way to win was to have a poker face and to hope that the cards weren't stacked against you. Such gambling terms are now common in English. We talk about having an ace up one's sleeve, and we boast that we will up the ante, we say of someone that he has hit the jackpot, or loaded the dice, or thrown in his hand, or played both ends against the middle, that he wouldn't follow suit and preferred to play a wild card when perhaps he should have recognized the chips were down.

Does the prevalence of gambling terms in the American language reveal something about our character? Maybe we're willing to take risks where others would prefer not to play at all. I'd bet on it.