Word.ws English Dictionary

play the board

play the board verb: to have as one's best hand the communal cards on the board. A player in such a situation can only achieve a split pot at best, since all the other players can also play the board.

Verb

play the board (third-person singular simple present plays the board, present participle playing the board, simple past and past participle played the board)

  1. To have as one's best hand the communal cards on the board. A player in such a situation can only achieve a split pot at best, since all the other players can also play the board.

Forms of play the board

third-person singular presentplays the board
present participleplaying the board
past participleplayed the board
pastplayed the board

Questions about play the board

What does play the board mean?
Play the board means to have as one's best hand the communal cards on the board. A player in such a situation can only achieve a split pot at best, since all the other players can also play the board.
What part of speech is play the board?
Play the board is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the board?
The past tense of play the board is played the board.

Words near play the board in the dictionary

  1. play the angles
  2. play the ball
  3. play the ball and not the man
  4. play the ball not the man
  5. play the ball, not the man
  6. play the board
  7. play the cat and banjo with
  8. play the clitar
  9. play the deuce with
  10. play the devil with
  11. play the dickens with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the board (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-play the board.wav.

Cite this entry: “play the board.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_the_board. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.