White Belt Poker

Although poker is often a pretty brutal game where you can’t afford to be sentimental, it’s still essentially a social game where people sit around a table together, so there really is no need for players to get abusive or aggressive in their language.

I was playing at a limit table at Full Tilt last night and there was a guy sitting on my right who was really pissing most of the table off. He began by showing his cards after every hand he won rather than mucking them, just to show us how clever he was at bluffing. Then he would tell us all how we were his bitches. Fucking prick.

Fortunately, I’ve dealt with guys like this before. The hands he was showing were often trash and he was trying to win almost every pot. He was playing no-limit at a limit table, so he was setting himself up. I waited for a big hand and after about twenty minutes I picked up a pair of kings. I raised and got re-raised by him before the flop. I capped the betting, with everyone else getting out of the way. The flop came Q high. I raised, then called his re-raise because I wasn’t convinced he had a set of queens. One of them maybe, but not a set. Worst case scenario was that he’d flopped two pair, so I decided just to call him down from the turn onwards. Unfortunately, another queen appeared on the river and I made a crying call strongly suspecting that I was beaten but hoping he’d been bluffing with trash. He turned over a queen and I mucked my kings. I was annoyed with myself for calling his re-raise after the flop. He’d provoked me into doing it by acting like a prick and I’d walked into the trap. I should’ve known better.

Then as the cards were being dealt for the next hand, I noticed that he’d typed the word ‘punk’ into the chat window – almost certainly directed towards me. After I asked if he was calling me a punk after he sucked out on me, his abuse was directed solely at me (by name) from then onwards. He told me how he was going to take all of my money and kept saying things like ‘bring it on dave’. I just wanted to concentrate on my game, so I decided to ignore him. It’s not as if he was going to play any worse than he was already if I started abusing him anyway. I could’ve muted him, but I was interested in what he would say next. He was clearly trying to make me chase him with bad cards, but it wasn’t going to happen again. He continued to play as if he was in a NL tournament and eventually busted out, losing the $30-odd he had sat down with. Some of the other players around the table laughed at him when he lost big pots, one even said ‘who da punk now?’

It’s just a real downer when someone gives out abuse like that. It makes it an unpleasant experience for everyone. I was pissed off by his constant bullshit, but I’m not someone who is particularly good at quickly firing off cutting responses. Although I thought up some good ones afterwards. Hours later I thought of some brilliant insults I could’ve thrown back at him. I am what Jay McInerney once called a “retarded reposter”

At least it made me think about how I would deal with people like this in future. Fortunately, it’s pretty rare in my experience, but I have some ideas for next time. It’s a shame that people have to act that way though.