Instead of just saying “Don’t abuse players who make bad plays or draw out on you,” then, because you’ve already heard that enough and it hasn’t stopped you, we’re going to embark on a little journey that I hope will take this axiom out of your “rules other people tell me about” category and put it into the “principles I want to apply because I don’t want to go broke” category. Whether you call the behavior “abusing other players,” “giving lessons at the table,” “blowing off steam after a bad beat,” or “exercising your ego,” engaging in any and/or all of these practices virtually ensures that you’ll either be a losing player or will win far less than you could be winning. Perhaps one player in 10,000 might be an exception to that statement.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose you start your hold’em hand with As-Ks and decide not to get fancy. Someone has already raised before you, and you put in another raise. A player behind you calls your three bets cold with 7d-2d, hangs around when the flop comes Ad-2c-Kh even though the pot has been bet and raised before it gets to him, hangs around for two or more bets when the turn brings the 5s, and then beats your top two pair when another deuce hits the river.
Your opponent, in other words, has not only played this hand very badly, he has gotten very lucky. Steam comes out of your ears and you start telling him how badly he played and how lucky he got. You explain a dozen or so good poker reasons for why he shouldn’t have played the hand this way. Now, let’s see what this tantrum — and I’m going to stick with calling it a tantrum even if you keep your tone civil and your voice calm throughout — can wind up costing you over the long run.
1) You might run the bad player off. Although you hated losing this pot, you know, deep down, that if this guy stays at the table long enough, the money is coming back. If you run him off, you not only lose your chance at getting his money on this night, but he might never come back.
2) By vocalizing your frustration, you’ve made yourself a target for everyone else at the table. Maybe you have a strong image, maybe not, but regardless of your normal image, you’ve now informed everyone else at the table that you’re upset and not playing your best game. This will give them confidence when facing you, and not only will they target you, they will probably play better against you.
3) You might teach the bad player something that he can come back and use against you. If your explanation of why he played badly is really good, he might learn and not make that mistake against you again. Wouldn’t you want him to make that mistake against him again? What happens if your lecture convinces your inexperienced opponent to read some poker books and improve? Now you’ll be facing not merely a tougher opponent, but one who might have a personal score to settle with you. I’m not saying he’s going to follow you into the parking lot, but he might study your game very carefully, learning things about you that he doesn’t know about anyone else, and become a difficult opponent simply because he knows your style.
4) You might teach one or more of the other players at the table something they didn’t know. Same idea as item #3, but much more important, because the other players probably have more skill than Mr. 7-2 suited, and so they will be more able to learn from your lectures. Not only might they learn something about how to play their hands, they might learn something about how you play your hands, making it far more difficult for you to collect from them when you have a strong hand.
Most players aren’t observant enough to remember betting patterns, but if you give a long lecture about how it was obvious you had A-K because of this, that, and the other, most of your opponents will be able to remember how you play, because you performed all the analysis for them. If your game includes a number of tough players, reason #4 might be the most important one of all those I’ve listed here. If you explain to everyone in great detail how you think a hand should be played, you might as well be handing out cards that say, “This is how I play this sort of hand, remember it so you can re-raise me when you have me beat and fold when you know I have you beat.”
Your analysis might also be wrong — it won’t be in this example, but it doesn’t take an A-K vs. 7-2 to induce a lecture from some players — and when that happens, you’ve shown your opponents a hole in your thinking. For example, you might ridicule a call on the turn, but it might be that the pot odds, both actual and implied, make the call correct. Demonstrating that you don’t understand this concept won’t help your results.
5) By showing that you are vulnerable to tilt, you may encourage opponents to engage in tilt-producing behavior against you. If your opponents start calling three bets cold with 7-2 suited to get you on tilt, you’re probably happy, but there are other ways to put someone on tilt, and by displaying your vulnerability, your opponents will look for ways to attack.
6) You may cause your other opponents to seek revenge. By running off a source of profit, and instead of the ego satisfaction you were seeking by showing off your knowledge of the game, you’ll be facing a table full of players who want to run you off, and who will think you’re an idiot, rather than a solid player. You wanted to prove your superiority and you wound up proving the exact opposite. If you get a reputation as someone who drives away weak players, you can rest assured that the next time the floorman gets called over to handle a dispute, you won’t be able to count on your tablemates to support your side of the story.
7) Even if you don’t run your opponent off this time, he may avoid you in future games. In larger cardrooms, most players usually have a choice of games. Your “victim” may decide you’re such a jerk that he doesn’t want to play against you anymore, and instead of the 4-8 hold’em, he decides to play the 1-5 stud. Even though this result is better for the poker world than losing the player entirely, it isn’t good for you. Worse still, other moderately skilled players may decide to avoid you, just to avoid a possible lecture. You may wind up finding that only the players who can beat you are willing to play with you. They’re willing to accept the lectures as a cost of doing business.
8) It’s not “good for the game” tonight. Although there are certainly some people who come to play poker in order to engage in nasty behavior that they can’t get away with at home or at work, many more come for the camaraderie and the fun of an evening out. A laughing, happy, joking table is probably a loose, easy to beat table. If you take the fun out of the game, you’ll probably tighten everyone up, sour some faces and make it tougher to win.
9) It’s not “good for the game” over the long run. Weak players, with a very few exceptions, are not “idiots.” They are inexperienced, and may have chosen to spend their time learning things like how to practice medicine or other socially useful skills. There was probably a time in your own climb up the poker ladder where you might have made the same mistake. Mistaking inexperience for idiocy, and verbalizing your mistake, not only risks driving new players out of poker, but it can easily cost cardrooms other friends. “How’d your visit to that big cardroom, go, Doc?” asks a friend at a doctors’ luncheon. “I didn’t like it, the players were jerks, I think I’ll stick with out Wednesday night game.” You’ve just cost both yourself and the cardroom several potential customers.
10) Remember the golden rule. If your ego requires you to lecture people who make a mistake, you probably have a pretty fragile ego, and the players you’ve annoyed will be only too happy to laugh at your own mistakes later. Oh, you don’t enjoy being laughed at or ridiculed? Then maybe you should think twice before you do it to someone else.
Nobody likes taking a bad beat, and if you have to blow off some steam afterwards, take a walk outside, go have an apple, go do something to let yourself cool down without firing a withering blast at your inexperienced opponent. Just remember that if you really are a good player, you will without question take more bad beats than you put on other people, because by definition a good player is getting his money in with the best of it. Don’t make an unfortunate result worse by mouthing off. It will cost you in ways you can’t begin to imagine.
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Poker is a game of skill, but a lot of the skill involves being able to conceal your true feelings and, at the same time, to assess the true feelings of others who are trying to do the same.
