Table Manners

You may remember my short entry in the front of the magazine last month – a shameful tale about abusing my opponent in the chat box. Well now I’ve decided to let you in on the whole sorry tale. But before I do I’d like to say that I don’t believe in karma. Good things happen and bad things happen and one doesn’t necessarily precede the other.

That said, the problem with having bold beliefs about the universe is that they will usually come back and gently bite you on the arse. Before I can get into my tale of woe I should make it clear that I don’t condone abuse of opponents – no matter how lucky they get.

Table talk is definitely part of the game when used strategically to try and make other players act the way you want them to. Abuse for the sake of abuse isn’t. As a point to take on board, if you do get involved in table chat you need to understand the effect it has on your opponent and you.

There are very few players who can engage in ‘banter’ or something more heated and still play calm, solid poker. In fact many players are affected without realising it. But if you do get under someone’s skin make sure you know the effect you’ve had on them.

Usually they will play more hands against you and call you more so you should tighten up against them, but also you should call more with moderate hands as they’ll make more moves against you. Of course if you can make a hand or two against someone while talking to them you can really get them steaming and that can be very profitable.

Anyway, as I was saying, during a recent heads-up online session I probably crossed the line of acceptable ‘chat’ several times. To be fair (and not wanting to sound like an eight-year-old) he started it. I was playing fast and basically running over him. When you do this to someone heads-up it’s extremely frustrating for the person involved. It also involves you playing some weak cards and hitting them.

As a result I’d shown down some ropey holdings and my opponent hadn’t woken up to what I was doing. As such I was called ‘a fish’, ‘a lucky fish’, ‘a lucky retard fish’, and ‘your momma’.

Usually I would have let it go – in fact, the best thing you can do in this position is tell them you’re ‘really sorry’, and ‘I’ve never been on a run this lucky’, to reinforce their belief and keep them playing. But I’d had a long day working, wasn’t in a very good mood and started talking back. The details are hazy and covered in shame but I definitely told him he ‘deserved to be sucked out on’, ‘couldn’t spell poker’, and ‘didn’t have the balls to play’ – and also ‘his momma’.

Bad karma

Tragically I was really enjoying myself – late night glass of something soporific in hand, hitting cards and talking both ‘trash’ and ‘smack’. Then things went horribly, badly, some might say karmically, wrong. It started well – I raised pre-flop with a pair of Nines and, after he called, a beautiful third Nine hit the flop. However, the flop came all clubs so I put a decent bet in, which he called. The turn brought a dreaded fourth club with my hand distressingly lacking one. He checked to me and I bet. He didn’t think too long before re-raising me the minimum. Having played with him for a while I knew this meant I was toast. But he made the mistake of giving me very good odds to call and try to fill my hand. So I called.

The random number generator span and out popped the case Nine. I had quads – sweet! He thought for a bit and then moved all-in. How beautiful is that? I was sitting on quads and the man who I’d been having a juvenile digital chat war with had just moved all his money in.

As the timer ticked down I took the opportunity to lay into him one more time: ‘Looks like I sucked out on you again monkey.’ Yeah, I said monkey… I’m not proud. I called and waited for his disgusted reaction and a whole stack of chips to be pushed my way. Sure enough, the cards were revealed and the chips pushed to… him?! Wait… wait a minute; something’s gone horribly wrong. Let’s recap. I had quads – that’s definitely a good hand. The cards had been turned over and the chips been pushed to… him.

Slowly, the creeping feeling that I hadn’t won the hand began to drip into terrible reality. I checked the hand history and there it was in all it’s ludicrous unpleasantness – he’d turned a straight flush! So after almost 10 years of playing poker I’d had quads beaten by a straight flush for the first time. You hear about these things happening but you always figure it’ll happen to someone else.

And it happened on one of the very rare occasions that I’d got sucked into a slanging match with my opponent. Maybe there is such a thing as karma after all. I stared at the screen for about three minutes, timed out and slunk off somewhere – anywhere – else.