Is there any way to get regs to stop constant strategy talk or worse commenting negatively on a (often newby) player's play?

The other day 2 guys went on for 5 minutes about how a guy had opened to $20 with KJ (in a 1/2) and then kept repeatedly bringing it up. I eventually pointed out that it was a straddle pot so the raise size wasn't ridiculous.

Worse was the some commentary about another player that went on about how he didn't even know what he had when he tabled his hand in one spot (it's likely he didn't) and even comments like he doesn't even know we're talking about him (likely not true).

I thought about deflecting - "So where do you think Romo is going to play next year?" and I'll sometimes defend like pointing out that a raise to $20 in a straddle pot isn't really crazy but the talk keeps coming back.

I guess these guys don't realize how destructive to good game dynamics this stuff is even when it's mild. But if you let it go on you end up with 9 guys grumping about that stupid play that the fish made 3 hours ago while the fish is now yucking it up at the blackjack table.

Other than the barrel of a loaded 12 gauge pressed against their temple?

No.

And even that won't work on some.

I had an experience with a player once who was clearly new, and slow rolled someone in a big pot with the nuts at showdown. Basically the regs started berating him and telling him how awful of a person he was, he ended up just picking up his chips and leaving the very next hand.

Would have been much better to try to explain to him that it's considered bad etiquette, and why.

They will never understand why they are chasing away new players, because they expect everyone to think just like they do. That's why they are talking strategy in the first place.

these guys are the absolute worst.
98 % of them are huge nits who think they're special because they aren't god awful at poker.
they find someone they can actually beat and if they're losing (or sometimes even if the awful player is just winning) they have to bitch about it.

i've lost it a few times on them at the table and have tried to talk to some politely off the table but they just don't get it in most cases.

Nothing you can do about the strat talk unless you can change the subject somehow. I just let them ramble.

I tend to defend new or bad players, I say things like 'you can't argue with results!' (when a fishy play nets a big pot) or 'he's paid the time charge, he can play how he likes'. Only so much you can do though.

You have to understand that this kind of thing is the inevitable result of playing with people who think they are good at poker but are not. So you have the outright fish, then you have these bad regs who are better than that but are still basically fish themselves. The alternative is to sit at a table with a bunch of good players, sure it might be more professional, but who needs that?

This kind of thing happens all the time, and I haven't been to a game yet anywhere where this didn't happen.

You'll get plenty of passive aggressive stuff about how a person called with K4, or J8, whatever. You'll get comments of "You called me down with that"? Three days/weeks/months later a person will complain that person soandso played differently/badly in their mind, and should be mocked for it.

I usually just say, "People pay their money, they get chips, and they can play however they want." People will agree, and forget they agreed nine seconds later when they get "bad beat".

+1

Almost all of them are so close minded in their strategies its incredible and there are so many easy ways to exploit them.

It's really sickening.well other than the fact they can't ever adjust their strategies. that's just funny.



I may have mentioned it in another thread but about a month ago by some miracle i found a great 5/10 nl game at bellagio with 4 business guys having fun.

Anyway guy on my left plays something like 3 hands in 4 hours 2 of them being aces and kings.
the aces went something like standard reg opens 30, business guy makes it 100 3 people call he flats aa on the button lmao.

some gross board runs out something like a six makes a straight or whatever. it's checked to the river someone bets 100 he calls and is good. as he drags the pot he's muttering to himself how nobody has the balls to squeeze behind him preflop lol.

some guy is super friendly and really bad. he knows at least 2 and maybe 3 of the business guys at the table. we go back and forth a lot. i play a lot of junk since i figure i can place slightly worse than garbage better than a bad player can play absolute garbage when i have 2 huge nits on my left. fun times. when the guy tries to talk to 2 or 3 of these regs they just ignore him.
i have a genuinely fun time talking with him.i stack him for a second time, he's totally felted he gets up to leave and on his own comes over to shake my hand.

once he leaves the nit with aces goes on and on about how bad he was , how on earth did he still have money blah blah blah. this is bad anyway but 2 or 3 of this guys friends are still at the table!and a horror show like this is literally the only guy on the planet this uber nit will ever beat.within a short time the friends left WITH MONEY and obviously told their friend who busted things that were said.

sorry for the long rant but a part of me hopes some of these game ruining regs see threads like this (often while at the table while on their ****ing tablets) and realize how idiotic their behavior is. oh wow you're better at poker than business dude who plays in vegas a few times a year and has fun with it.what an accomplishment!

we need more players who treat poker like blackjack or craps not less. and the worse they're treated in the poker room the less they go into one.

Bad regs forget to treat non-regs like customers.

Here's what rubs me the wrong way about advice like this: bad poker players should be treated nicely, but the attitude that they should be treated nicely BECAUSE they're bad leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest - when bad players behave badly (and their **** is overly tolerated), as well as people somehow thinking good players don't need to be treatwd well.

A good life rule is just to treat everyone well - good players, bad players, regs, recs, good dealers, bad dealers, good floors, bad floors, the guy pissing in the urinal next to you, etc. Treat them all as if the next time you see them, they're going to be a drunk LAGtard on your right.

treat everyone equally.
those that tak about hands and strategy during the game end up broke as the bad players who they are schooling tend to pay attention when they are in the hand with them.

it ultimately raises the level of play tremendously of the weak players at the game.

i sometime like to say to them that trying to show how smart your are doesnt show how smart your are.

this has been one of my pet peeves for ever since ive played poker. and they will never stop as it is an ego thing and that how it is.

i agree you should treat everyone well in general until they deserve otherwise.

in any business you're going to be nice to all of your customers but your vips so to speak will get better service.
so if a whale says something stupid to me i'll just ignore it. if tablet nit says something stupid to me i'm going to put him in his place.

i'm not saying let a whale say or do ANYTHING they want but they definitely get a lot more leeway than most.

unfortunately you are correct. they can't see the forest for the trees.

as though it matters to be "right" about a hand when that same "idiot" (who can afford to lose money and lots of it) is sitting at the blackjack table.

Nobody could say it better than this.

it looks like we all think alike but it woud be great if it could be conveyed to the others that dont.

i played recently in an 800 dollar buyin event and it seemed like at least three persons at every table of the 20 plus tables were analyzing every decent potted hand, and going so far as putting the players on ranges and telling what they should have done.

so i picked out those at my table and said to my neighbor watch these three will be gone soon, and they were the better players at the table as far as the cards part.
but as i predicted each went broke on hands they shouldnt have as the other in the pot outplayed them just because he knew too much how they thought.

I love when people talk strategy at the table, the faster I figure out how someone plays the quicker I can adapt against them and start making money.

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this sounds like torture.

i agree most posting in this thread think alike. but plenty of times i see people at the tables on 2p2 on their tablets when taking breaks between movies. i'm hoping some will read threads like this and develop some common sense at the tables.

Well maybe some of these folks could learn and change, BUT most of these guys really believe that they already know everything they need to be successful and certainly won't go to 2+2 forums to learn how to behave at a poker table. I really doubt most of these types have ever heard of or posted on a poker forum. I also try to deflect a little from time to time when it gets really bad, but it seldom works very well. I think it is just a part of live poker that's not going away.

Can you really imagine sitting in a meeting in a workplace and Bill and Joe are going on and on about how awful Ted is at writing his TPS reports and how Ted is too stupid to even use the right TPS report cover while Ted is sitting right there? This isn't socially acceptable but these grumps do the equivalent at the poker table every day.

We all agree it's bad. Bad for the game, bad for getting new players into the game, bad for my enjoyment of the game. But is there anything we can do about it?

I'm not the loud gregarious type that can launch into a conversation that will drown it out. I generally want to avoid conflict at the table. I'm happy to lightheartedly poke fun at people if they're known to me at least a little. I just don't feel like I have a lot of tools to apply here to bring about change.

I will usually just loudly shout out that the free poker lessons are on thursday. or "hey, how much do you charge for lessons?", or some version of that first, and hope it shuts them up.

failing that, i will either engage the fun guy in conversation to distract him, or start complaining about all the other guys' ****ty plays and/or how tight they play and how no one should ever get into a hand with them, whichever one will make them more annoyed. i don't do it to get into a fight, but to see whether anything can at least temporarily stop their lip wagging.

This is what I call "big business thinking," when you join an established organization and the VIPs are already known, identified by someone else, and your job is simply to maintain the status quo.

"Small business thinking" is where you don't know who the VIPs are. Everyone who walks up to your taco truck or buys a hammer at your hardware store may become the VIP which catapults your business to the next level - the anonymous restaurant reviewer, the general contractor.

Poker best fits small business thinking. Long term, your winnings don't come from the drunk guy spewing off three buyins in 45 minutes. It comes from people who are just good enough that their losses are sustainable, or think they're a lot better than they are. By the time you've identified who your VIPs are, your reputation has crystallized in their minds.

Treat everyone at the VIP level. Easy game.

I've always had too much 'teacher' in me .. It's more of an acceptance issue. I know I talk too much trying to show 'I belong' in the situation. I don't really go looking for credit so to speak, but I do feel my two cents has some weight behind it. You'd think at my age I would get over it ... but ...

At the table I look at 'advice' as being double edged. One, no, you don't want to make others better, thus making them harder to beat. But two, I also want them to come back. So if someone asks me my opinion I will offer them 'something' they can learn from. There is one whale that almost always insists on sitting next to me so we can chat. He will basically forget everything I tell him by his next trip, but he does get 'better' during the current session.

I don't see a lot of the regs away from the table and our games are 80-90% regs so strategy conversation is almost a given with your neighbors, if not the whole table.

I actually lost it a bit against a reg player the other day when he called me down in just an awful spot and gave the ole "I thought you had AK" comment. He thought he had OESD and live cards but he only had 3 outs on the low end of the straight .. and of course hit it. We had a short conversation about getting 'any' value against that board 'if' he hit and the word 'awful' was used.

I felt comfortable enough with him to let him know I thought he was better 'than that' whereas the rest of the table could have seen it as being crass/bad loser had they not known me. Our regular games are more like a home game.

In a non-reg room I really don't talk much at all, even if asked a question so I guess I adapt to the situation .. but usually try to treat others with respect, even if I (and especially when they) are having a bad day. GL

These players are the nut worst. Not only are they outright rude and making it less likely these new players will want to come back, almost unilaterally they are bad at poker which makes it hurt that much more.

Hate them.

You called with THAT??????

If you saw my hand would you have wanted me to call?. Well you got what you wanted!

No, just say that it's a tough spot and you could probably go either way, but against that opponent and in that situation you'd lean toward whatever action actually happened.