Always makes me smile inside.

you lament that fact that the seat you just changed from got dealt a big hand

you keep changing seats in limit to avoid the blinds

you sit down at a limit table and are already mad

you are a beautiful woman wearing dental floss for underwear in a see thru dress and are charming all the men

i believe the woman is the one doing the fishing in this scenario...

also pics or it didn't happen

you list my outs for me after seeing both hands. If only I could do this on my own ...

when someone asks me ''do you do this for a living?''

I don't really know how to reply to that, but it makes it obv that they're looking up to me and are going to play straight forward

.

and buyin for less than 100bb also is a dead giveaway

Remember, human beings are incredibly susceptible to the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.

Without a specific discussion with the player who leaves, or a controlled study of behavior at poker tables with and without strategy talk, there's no basis to conclude that this is actually the reason these things happened.

One of the things that I learned playing so much online poker is that most live players believe a lot of stuff about poker that just isn't true, due to LOLsmallsamplesizes.

I don't think it's really necessary or particularly admirable to discuss poker strategy in detail at tables. But I also think that strat talk is pretty much harmless, that most fish know they are making in some sense "incorrect plays" (and like it when they beat an "expert" with a bad hand), and that some strat talk can actually be good (complimenting a fish who makes a good call or fold, saying that there was nothing he or she could do when the fish's aces get cracked and there literally was nothing the fish could do, etc.), especially since it's generally inevitable that at a poker table, people will enjoy talking about the one common interest they have (playing poker, duh!).

I don't know how you should reply (probably depends on whether it's true or not), but I have a suggestion on how to respond: be less serious at the table, especially if you're playing 1/2-2/5 NL or <15/30 FL.

People taking you seriously hurts your win rate at small stakes games.

IMO & IME.

I've certainly had players comment on why they're leaving. More often they make a few comments while nursing their last buy-in and then shrug and leave.

I've also had weeks at a time with the same strat talkers being on the first tables that break, and also the quietest overall tables. It's no secret that a chatty table is a profitable table.

At some point you're just going to have to at least consider the perspective of people who see tables that don't have you at them. After all, there are no case studies for most of the poker strategy books sold by the owners of this forum. Simple long-term personal experience is the basis of most of what this site is all about.

We don't determine truth through uncontrolled personal observation. We use math, and scientific rigor, and methodologies that weed confirmation biases and post hoc fallacies out of the process.

Poker, specifically, is a mathematical game and the winning players are the people who approach the game with mathematical rigor and don't simply jump to quick assumptions based on things they cannot confirm to be true and cannot test.

You see what you want to see. That doesn't mean it is true. It just means it is what you believe to be true. But any person at a poker table who goes into the game believing that this is what fish do will interpret any fish leaving in that manner.

Further, have you considered that some fish may stay because they like strat talk and like to beat the "experts" with "bad" hands? You don't talk to those people, because you don't notice them. They just stay in the games and play.

You haven't done a controlled study. You have just used preexisting biases to selectively interpret data. That is not rigorous. Poker requires you look beyond your biases and not assume that your initial interpretation is correct, but rather that you study things.

In California, where I play, the games are full of fish who talk strategy. That doesn't, of course, mean that strat talk necessarily draws fish in. But it does mean that there are other data points out there besides yours. But you don't care about data-- you have a bias, you some data that you think confirms it, and that's the end of the matter for you.

You are flat wrong, not only about this issue, but about what it means about how you approach the game of poker in general.

I don't understand this one. I play in a lot of home games where you aren't always going to get hundos when you cash out. Its usually of combination of 10s, 20s, 50s, and 100s and even occasionaly 5s lol. I've cashed out for over 3k in these games and maybe 500 of it was hundos.

Poker tends to do that

When you min raise a ****ing straddle with 3 limpers. Unless this is a secret strategy I'm missing out on.

Buy the supersecret decoding ring and find out.

You are a very analytical and math-minded person. I respect that, as I am, too. I minored in math in college, even. I'm there with you.

This is only one part of the equation. Poker is also a psychological game. And at the higher limits, it's a game of networking (which could be seen as part of the psychology). Somebody who only looks at the math is leaving money on the table.

Yes, confirmation bias does exist. And I do have a vested interest in games staying active. Over many years, I've gotten pretty good at guessing which tables will have more action, which tables will tip better, and which tables will break the soonest. Contributing to that is more than a few instances of people actually complaining about strat talk at the table, and picking up chips and leaving, citing that as the reason.

No, I do not have an air-tight study on this. But I do have my observations, as well as the observations of many who have been where I have, as well as the observations of many winning players. At some point you just need to step back and say, "Y'know, maybe there is something to this. At the very least, I'm not going to reject it out-of-hand."

Sure, some of this exists. I've never said it doesn't. All I'm saying is that I see a variety of table temperatures throughout the day, and I have opinions about what tends to break a table.

Nor have you.

FFS, this is not a scientific study. This is an observation, borne out through years of seeing it play out time and time again. I'm not claiming anything is 100% one direction or another. Stop making it so rigid, and stop being so insufferable about it. You're a smart dude, this much is clear. So why can't you step back and see?

Some lunatic at a 1/2 table is buying in the max ($300) and shoving it out blind before the deal. If the action doesn't change before him, his pre-deal shove is binding. He's been doing this for about 5 hands in a row now.

When you call the $2 then fold to his auto-shove, I know you are a fish.

He lost 5 hands in a row? Game is rigged.

4 times in a row.

I was playing in an informal cash game at my local snooker club after a tourney. After a few people (everyone probably) limped in I limp QJo on the button. Flop comes QJx, everyone checks to me, I bet 3/4 pot. One caller only, an old, friendly woman. Turn comes J, she checks, I bet about 1/2 pot, she calls again. River is a blank, she checks, I move all in (I had her covered), she calls, I declare full house and show my QJ, she shows ATo and tells me, "I was ahead before the flop."

When you grab a huge stack of chips and hold it over the line when I am deciding what to bet, because you are SO eager to call any bet. I'm definitely scared now and check to you good sir.

I hope youre joking. That's the biggest reverse tell in the world. Bet!

Just being curious, what do you mean here?

I believe he means knowing the regs and solid players from fish. Although at any stake live this makes a huge difference and improves our ability to (silently like a psychedelic conversation) communicate we aren't playing hardball against eachother/ it's us vs them.

I mean the juiciest games are not in casinos. They also don't always run regularly. You need to be invited to play, and on the short-list of people notified when and where a game with whales comes together.

On the flip side, you also need to become a bit more of a hustler. Everybody's friends, except not really. There's a lot of multi-level thinking going on away from the game. It's a weird world.

pfapfap is right the juiciest games are in my text message inbox

Heard this today
"I swear i get delt seven deuce twice as much as i get aces!"