Nonetheless, even in poker there are rules, and acceptable sneakiness does not extend to, say, shortchanging the pot or stealing chips from players who aren’t looking.
One of the other kinds of conduct that frequently lures people to poker is the ability to misbehave. At home, one’s spouse usually has rules or standards about swearing, rudeness, shouting, etc., and most jobs have even stricter rules along those lines. But at the poker table, within limits, behavior of that sort is more tolerated.
Even though you can “get away” with such conduct in most poker games, I’m going to argue here that you’re making a big mistake if you do. And I mean a monetary mistake, not merely a social one, although I think the social aspects are important too.
A CONFLICT AT THE CARNIVALE
For example, while attending the 2000 Carnivale of Poker, I was playing in a Texas Hold ‘em side game against a relatively average line-up, most of whom I did not know. I lost a big hand with multi-way action when two players with very weak hands each called four raises before the flop. I had A-A, one of them had 3-3, and the other had A-2 offsuit (there were two other players also in the hand).
The flop came 8-2-2, and after a flurry of betting, the three of us were still left. The turn card was a 3, giving the player with pocket three’s a full house, and I was toast, although the A-2 player was toastier, since he couldn’t fold his three 2s and lost a lot more.
That sort of thing happens all the time in poker, so I didn’t whine or complain. Although I felt unlucky on that particular hand, people who will call four bets with hands like 3-3 and A-2 are precisely where the profit comes from in hold ‘em, so I wasn’t going to educate them or bitch at them.
These two guys couldn’t give it up, though. They were both chortling about how cleverly they had played the hand, about how they outplayed me, etc., etc. I wasn’t surprised to hear this from the guy who had won the hand, but it did seem odd coming from the loser. I guess he was trying to console himself.
WHEN SPEAKING SOFTLY, SPEAK SOFTLY!
At this point, I said, under my breath, “Oh yeah, you guys played that hand brilliantly.” I’d thought I’d said it much too softly for anyone to hear, but somehow Mr. A-2 heard it, and blew a gasket, not realizing or understanding that if I’d wanted to show him up, I’d have made my comment much louder.
“Oh, yeah,” he said (always a witty way to make a comeback), “well I know how bad you play, that King-3 hand proved that.”
I still didn’t to get into it with him, so I said “actually it’s funny you mention that hand, I was just thinking about that one when I went to the bathroom, you got unlucky but no one did anything wrong.”
He didn’t want to let it go, though. “No one did anything wrong! You played it like an idiot! You must be the worst player here!”
I KNEW BETTER, BUT…
Deep breath. I knew better than to get started with this. If the player you’re ridiculing truly is weak, you might drive him away, and not get to win any more of his money. If you’re wrong, you prove to everyone listening that your mouth is bigger than your brain. Bit I still have enough testosterone flowing to be unable to let comments like that go. Probably I should have said “you’re absolutely right” but what can I say, I probably need another few lifetimes before I get that evolved.
“Well if you really want to know,” I said, the rest of the table listening because there had been a discussion about my writing for Card Player and Casino.com while my friend was away from the table, “I had K-3 of spades, right? And I was in the big blind and the pot was unraised before the flop, right?”
“Yeah, so? You played it like an idiot.”
Sigh. Show-off time for Andy. With the sort of no-pauses-for-a-breath speed that Matt Damon used to blow away his pseudo-intellectual bar debate opponent in Good Will Hunting, I said “So then the flop came 3-5-6 with one spade, giving me a pair, a decent kicker, and a backdoor flush draw. You checked from the small blind, I bet, got three callers, and then you raised. I just called, as did everyone else. On the turn, another three came, and you bet out. I just called with my three 3s, in part because you could have had something like 4-7 in the small blind, in part because I wanted callers if you didn’t. Everyone called. On the river a King hit, you bet, I raised, you said ‘s_ _ t’, everyone else folded, and you called, showing your 4-7 for the straight you flopped, and my full house took the pot. No one made any mistakes. You just got a bad result. Any questions?”
FAILING TO CUT HIS LOSSES
My opponent, although clearly a bit surprised that I could remember every card and bet from a hand that had happened an hour earlier, couldn’t let go. “That’s not how the hand went,” he said. “You were pushing it all the way through and you were an idiot to play K-3,” he said.
The rest of the table looked at him with bemused smiles, and I decided to drop it there, rather than continue on with free lessons. I certainly wasn’t going to get into a “Did so! Did not! Did so” argument with him; even in my annoyed state, I was able to see the futility of that.
So what was the result of this little exchange? My opponent, in an effort to try to show someone else up, had conclusively proven he didn’t know much about poker, that he was ill mannered, and perhaps most importantly to his short term results, that he was angry and “on tilt.”
GO ON TILT, AND YOUR CHIPS SLIDE TOWARD YOUR OPPONENTS
This led, over the next half-hour, to a number of players calling him when they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. His stack of chips dwindled. “Tilted” players frequently play too fast, calling and raising more than they should, and knowledge of this state gives the other players a nice advantage.
What had my hotheaded friend accomplished with his tirade? He lost more money than he would have, and established himself, at least in my mind and probably in the minds of the others at the table, as a weak player who could be goaded into an emotional state that would render him vulnerable to losing. He will be at a disadvantage if he plays with any of those players again.
Is that the sort of reputation you want? If not, be careful about getting into arguments about how well someone else played a hand. Even if you’re right, you’re giving free lessons to someone who probably doesn’t deserve them; in retrospect, I wish I’d just kept my mouth shut.
I’m not mad at myself for whispering the “Yeah, you guys played that hand brilliantly,” because I still don’t know how he heard me above the din in the room. But the other players at the table—at least the better ones—probably thought less of me for picking up the rather pathetically swung “you’re an idiot” gauntlet.
WINNING THE BATTLE AND LOSING THE WAR
From the financial side, if the other players now thought I was the kind of player who could remember every card and who would gladly reconstruct their incorrect plays in an argument, I was probably forcing them to play better against me, because they wouldn’t want to play weak cards and then be reminded of it later. So in winning a battle, maybe I lost a war. Anything you do that makes your opponents play better against you is a mistake.
Arguments like this aren’t good for poker, and they usually aren’t good for the arguers. Even as the “winner” of the argument, I felt diminished by it. I already write for the best poker magazine and the leading gaming websites. Why did I need to prove to some random player that I could remember and analyze a hand better than him? Could it be spelled E-G-O?
Well of course it was about ego. But ego isn’t why I play poker, I hope. I play for the money, because I like the camaraderie of the other players, for the intellectual challenge, and because I get to indulge my sneaky side in a socially acceptable way.
NONE of those motives was served by my performing the intellectual equivalent of my picking this guy up and snapping him in two, and unless you play poker because you like doing that sort of thing, “proving” your brilliance is almost always just going to cost you, one way or another, in the long run.
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In the poker room you never sit down to play on your own. Rather, you make your way to the desk behind which the room manager, some supervisors, and some chip runners are milling.
