{"id":1150,"date":"2017-08-23T14:39:22","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T12:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2017-08-23T14:39:22","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T12:39:22","slug":"idiom-129-ace-in-the-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/idiom-129-ace-in-the-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"idiom 129 – „ace in the hole“"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s idiom is neither violent, nor bloody. It comes from the world of poker and is used in the following discussion between two \u00a0co-workers who are in the middle of some tough negotiations (Verhandlungen<\/em>):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

„Marion, I don’t know if we can get the seller to lower the price any more.“<\/em><\/p>\n

„Why not? We’re the last company left in talks with these guys!“<\/em><\/p>\n

„What? The other potential buyers pulled out?“<\/em><\/p>\n

„Yeah – Robert was out for lunch today and overheard them talking. They’re done.“<\/em><\/p>\n

„Well, that’s brilliant – why didn’t you tell me?“<\/em><\/p>\n

„I wanted to leave that fact unknown for as long as possible. It’s our ace in the hole.“<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In one form of poker, some of the cards are left face-down (ungedeckt)<\/em> on the table. These cards are „in the hole.“ Imagine I have the hand shown above, and the ace is hidden. I have no idea that my hand will beat almost any other hand out there, and exactly that is the meaning of „ace in the hole“ – it’s any useful tactic or fact that remains hidden until it is used to the owner’s advantage.<\/p>\n

In German, you would use the phrase\u00a0„Ass im \u00c4rmel,“\u00a0<\/em>although that phrase suggests that playing the ace gives you an unfair advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s idiom is neither violent, nor bloody. It comes from the world of poker and is used in the following discussion between two \u00a0co-workers who are in the middle of some tough negotiations (Verhandlungen):   „Marion, I don’t know if we can get the seller to lower the price any more.“ „Why not? We’re the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35,26,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}