This is not inaccurate, but it does not take away from the fact that when sitting at a table, there are certain types of conversations that are just grating on the nerves. The constant play by play and narrative of why a person made every decision can be very revealing, but at a certain point, it is tiresome.

But god invented headphones for a reason. I don't even turn them on all the time, just the physical act of putting them on allows me to tune out the drone of other players badly analyzing a hand (I don't have an issue with the occasional commentary, but every singe dang hand, every single dang decision)

1/2, $200 effective. Pick up KK. There's a raise & few callers, I repop, villain in MP shoves over the top, I call. He's got JJ. Binks his set on a flop of AJ3r, turn Q, river 10. I don't celebrate, he does the super standard upset talk, I play the standard sympathy card, 'yeah it was sick'. He rebuys and over the next two hours retells the story six times in every possible detail to people who join the table. Of course, its a biased retelling not highlighting his original suck, just my resuck.

I'm pretty laid back, but this was making me angry. Had to catch myself from saying something rude near the end.

While there's nothing wrong with that, saying what I identified as the helpful stuff speeds things up.

For instance, you have 96 on a TK287 board. Saying "straight" as you table your hand speeds up the showdown, because otherwise they often have to look carefully and see, and sometimes the caller will have to say something like "what does he have?".

Do you have to do this? Not at all. Not saying a word and just showing is fine. But it's also fine to say the helpful thing that guides the caller at showdown.

They still do this anyway

Getting called by an inferior hand and griping about it.

Goober in tonight's WSOP has AQ and gets called pre flop by K9 .

He loses and complains that the guy never should have called.

So you want him to have a good hand to call you?

O..k....

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So to put it more directly...criticizing someone's play aka berating. Happens so often it's ridiculous. Especially from other grinders who really should know better.

Well,yeah.

But that's like saying acting like a jerk at the table.

I'm being more specific.



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Yeah.....lot of people don't seem to realize it does not matter how the board runs out once the money goes in. Most of your equity with kings over jacks comes from you not needing to hit a set, but some small percentage comes from hitting the nut straight. All that matters is jacks guy was a huge dog from the start and he lost as expected. Not remotely a suckout.

You tempted to explain this to him? I have to admit I've done this once or twice. One time I have AA, get called all-in by AK. Flop is KK2. I river an Ace. Guy explodes.

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Oh god no. I would never waste energy explaining someone's flawed logic back to them. Seems redundant. Especially after they lose $$. More like 'can you shut up!?' after the fifth retelling. In hindsight, if he would have flatted my repop with that flop I would have likely gone away and he would have picked up a $150ish pot instead of losing his stack.

I call a tiny bet OTT with a royal flush draw, river double-pairs the board, my A high now beats his baby pockets. Villain, a reg who has been playing for 20+ years, then berates me for 'calling with a gutshot on a paired board'.

I didn't explain word one, if you can't be bothered to learn how to play, I'm not teaching you.

Agree with this in that there is a lot of free information listening to the local poker heroes showing off their knowledge but JFC it gets tedious.

People that call a pair in their hand 'pockets'. I've heard it a lot in the last year or so. Please don't tell me this is going to be a thing.

Online I've responded to "You have pockets?" with "No. I'm wearing sweats"

New pet peeve. 2/4 limit. Wait, more specifically, 2/4 limit while a big high hand promotion is going on.

Everything about it. Played for a few hours with a newbie who has no business playing NL. Never been so tilted.

curious where this was at.. my local room had their monthly high hand special this past weekend and I saw a 2/4 limit game going, which I never see.

I was a NL snob for many years. I prefer limit now.

2/4 or 3/6 can have amazingly fun games.

Profitable long term...probably not as rake is a killer at low stakes. Plus you can also get a table full of OMC types that suck the life out of anything remotely close to fun.

They run 2/4 all the time here.

I could probably still enjoy low stake LHE, but I think the high hand just made it unbearable. It was also that every single flop seemingly paired the board. So a typical hand went like this.

7 limpers. Or 1 raise, with 6 callers, matters not.

K22 checks around. A checks around. 7. Bet / raise / call. 72 vs. K2.

Like every hand went this way.

Wouldn't say it's a new thing, but I have heard this from time to time over the years. When I have heard it, it's usually been from some street/thug looking guy that strikes me as someone who plays penny poker while sitting on lawn chairs drinking a 40.

Somewhat similar to the "pockets" is the people that don't differentiate between trips and a set. I guess it's somewhat semantics as both are three of a kind, but it's just one of those things that people say at a poker table that bugs me for some reason. Ya know, something like "Dog, I've had pockets nine times since I sat down and I ain't made trips yet". LOL

It seems like a lot of these games are filled with players chasing promotions. I often feel out of place when I sit down in a game like that and I think players get irritated by my playstyle (raising too much?). No matter what the stake I play the game to win. Further, no matter what game I am playing I am doing my best to win! The challenge and excitement that comes from competition is the main reason to play for me. Playing with other people who are not trying to win at poker, but trying to win a promotion is not enjoyable for me at all.

That reminds me of my biggest pet peeve (right now): People criticizing how I play. Recently more people than usual have been getting on me about how tight I play. It's really makes me feel unwelcome. Yesterday someone said a player told him that they left the table because of me. He was joking, but it still hurt a bit.

Then they see me 3-bet K9s or fail at a triple barrel bluff and comment on how I'm "mixing it up," or whatever, but I'm not playing any differently. I just never had a previous opportunity where I thought I could 3-bet light profitably or I did do it previously but it didn't go to showdown.

I don't like people who consider your value at the table based on how many hands you VPIP. I am called a nit despite being fairly aggressive with many of the hands that I do play just because I don't see nearly as many flops as other people. I probably put more total action in with the fewer hands I play than most of the passive fish limping and calling every hand trying to see if they can hit something. They see me as tight for not playing a lot of hands despite putting in plenty of action overall.

browni, you and I play the same game....and have the same experiences it seems. I don't care what 'they' say as it is there way to compete since playing less hands just doesn't seem right to them.

My problem with these low level limit w/HH games and how I (we) play..... the several that call a PFR will do so with the most extraordinary range of cards. AKo raise, five callers. Flop KT3r and by the time it's over, flopped 2 pair with T3 takes the pot. Ranging an opponent is pretty tough.

Players see others win a big pot with T3o and think playing ATC is a good strat for live low-limit HE.

How can you NOT love this game? lol

I understand where you're coming from. I don't see exactly the same problem, but I think it's related. When I started playing in 2005 turbos weren't very common, I'm not sure if they even had bounty tournaments and many other variants weren't available. SNGs were 9 players with no turbos and no antes.

Here comes my grumpy old man rant:

Players don't want to just play poker any more. They want to be entertained. They want gimmicks, the next big thing, the new variant, whatever the cool kids are playing now. We don't just have turbos, we have hypers, double-or-nothings, jackpots, SNG 2.0, 50-50s, shootouts, and yes, now we have to deal with high-hand promotions. In the Detroit regional thread they've recently been talking a lot about how high-hand promotions affect the game.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...49/?highlight=

This is not new. At one point on PokerStars, even with a huge player pool, SNG regulars started to complain that it was hard to make money playing 9-player regular-speed SNGs because the SNG pool was divided among so many variants, types, sizes, speeds and levels.

To top it all off, now on WSOP.com you can go on "missions", reaching goals by doing things like winning a tournament or knocking out a certain number of players. There are lots of cool graphics exploding on the screen, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpf0_xSMsLU

Maybe the next big thing could be first-person-shooter poker. When you knock someone out, a screen will pop up at your table and you get to blow away an avatar that looks just like your victim.

Now, on to table comments about your play:

I'm not with you on this at all.

I want players to talk about the play. It gives me a great read on who has a clue and who doesn't. Like you, I don't play a lot of hands, but a pretty high percentage of those are speculative hands. I have what Norman Chad calls suitedconnectoritis. I get lots of comments about my play.

I heard two players arguing about me. One said that I was tight because I didn't play many hands. The other said that i was loose because I won a pot opening with 87s.

That's great for me. If players don't understand what I'm doing, or are confused by my play, that's a good thing and I'm happy to know what he thinks. Even if someone gets a correct read on me, if he's dumb enough to tell me, I can use that. If a regular in my game says that I never bluff, guess what's going to happen to him sometime soon when we're in a big pot?

That said, even beyond the table talk, I don't care what anyone says. If someone at the table calls my wife a whore, I won't respond. Really. I need to stay focused. My job is not to defend my family's honor. My job is to finish high in that tournament and bring the money home to my family.

My wife agrees, by the way. It's all about the Benjamins. She loves counting the cash that I bring home. If it's a big cash, she spreads out the bills and takes a picture.

If someone at the table is crude or drunk or abusive, or just saying dumb things all the time, other players might tilt, but I won't--that gives me an edge. Those players may be way out of line, but when players are drinking during an 6-hour tournament, that stuff is going to happen. You can't let it get to you.

"To play this game you have to be tough. You have to be willing to bust your grandmother." -- Doyle Brunson

All-in and call in tournaments. Both players gotta show their hand right? How irritating is it when neither player wants to flip over their hand first and you even have that guy who justifies why the other guy has to show their hand first. Both guys gotta show their hand now turn them over and stop with the pissing contest. The cards aren't gonna suddenly change because you flipped your cards over 0.28 seconds faster than the other guy.




In tournaments, blinds go up right as a hand is completed. You always tend to have that one guy in the blinds who tries justifying that it's still the previous level. Seen every justification in the book. Even had a guy try to tell me I had already started shuffling when the announcement was made just as I got done pushing the pot and hadn't even scooped up the deck yet. Luckily the supervisor was literally right behind me and stopped those antics real quick but man those guys irritate the **** out of me.

Who cares what people at the table think of you. You're there to stack them not to care about their opinion of you.

When there is a floor ruling and everyone tries to tell the floor what happened instead of letting the dealer explain