Why do Blackjack players say "Monkey" at the table?On The Felt

You may have heard it in a casino at a blackjack table.

MONKEY! MONKEY! MONKEY!

Generally it’s a method of calling for a “10” of some kind when someone is doubling down on a hand, or is showing a single ace.

If that’s not the case, the player’s an idiot, in which case, you should walk away from the table before that player messes up the shoe, and takes down the table.

*ahem*
Getting back to the subject at hand, most people really don’t know where the term came from, only that it’s popular, and like all lemmings, one will following the next, while they all jump off a cliff to join the rest.

This term follows along that same path, after which, you may not want to use it again.

The word orang is the Malaysian/Indonesian word for “person”, which is the root for the word orangutan (yes, the primate). Orang, in many Chinese dialects, primarily Mandarin and Taiwanese, is a derogatory word for a black person (you can equate it to the n-word).

Those that frequent casinos will understand when I say this:

Where there’s a casino, you will find Asians.

_{(If you wonder why that is, let’s just say, it’s part of the religion.)}

In a translation gone bad, it is perhaps assumed that a Chinese person at a casino at some point called out MONKEY! while playing blackjack, innocently believing they were calling for a “black” jack, or a n***** and, since no one understood the ramifications of what this one person was saying, this person was lucky enough to walk away, unscathed, rather than get jumped, then beaten down for using the racial slur (translated into another language).

Although not meant to be a derogatory comment in general, most singularly racial societies rarely understand the slang that sometimes may come out of their mouths, which under multi-racial circumstances, would constitute a beat-down of “yo mama” proportions.

You may think you sound “cool”, and in your ignorance, you had no idea, but now that you do, don’t be THAT person, and just take it out of your gambling vocabulary.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.