OK, I'll make this short and sweet.

People who wear sunglasses, i Pods, hoodies with the hood up etc to home poker games, or the lowest limit table at a casino for that matter.

Douchy or not????

Its okay, not a problem except for the ipod, which I feel is anti social at a home game. If they really want to use a ipod at a home game, just make sure it doesn;t delay the game.

At a home game?

IPOD -100% Douche Home games are typically as much of a social event as they are about playing cards.

Sunglasses and Hoody -50/50 Probably just someone who watches too much poker on TV. I have two of these guys in my home game and they can wear anything they want to as long as they keep playing the way they do.

Douchy? Not really. Something that should earn them derision and a healthy round of being the target of a point and laugh? Absolutely.

About the only thing of that nature I do is wear a hat, and that's primarily because I shave my head, and it's cold with nothing to trap the heat. I'll use an iPod during a tournament, but then only intermittently, though primarily due to battery life than anything else.

Now if they're playing in a home game and completely battening down the hatches like Hellmuth or Laak have a tendency to do, then I'd definitely laugh at them and make it clear that it is laughing at them, rather than with them.

[x] watch too much tv
[x] douche

Anyone bringing an iPod to a homegame better also be bringing a looooooooot of beer, or else they can GTFO.

Maybe douchy, maybe nerdy, maybe a terrible player, maybe a poser, or maybe desperate. Maybe some other things, or a combination of the above.

I think I've written this before, so I'll be brief. A long-time player in our game showed up one game with sunglasses. We gave him plenty of ****, then the next game half the table wore them and laughed at him some more. He took his off and so did we and that was the end of that.

It depends, hoodies I think are standard. At our home game sometiems people play a few donkaments online but that's only because most of us have played the same game for years.

Oh yeah, another guy used to bring an ipod years ago. We all thought it was somewhat anti-social, but whatever. Maybe he didn't like our music. It did not slow down the game, as I recall.

I like how you handled it, perfect

Ha! Nice, e.

It was pretty cold in the garage last night, so I wore a hoodie most of the time.

I actively discourage people from doing things that take them out of the social realm, tho'. I told one guy to put away his newspaper last night. Tho' if it's five hours into the session and someone is on a big losing streak, I'm not going to stop him from wearing his headphones or sending some text messages or whatever he wants to do to keep himself motivated.

Also, in a big league tourney, where we're playing for big prizes, if someone needs his particular music to play well, that's cool too.

I used to have more people wearing headphones, but then I started playing better music and that stopped.

Hey, maybe we're playing better music now, too. At my place we use Pandora, and set up stations based on input from the players. We mix up different styles, from bluegrass, to jazz, to classic rock. No hip-hop...yet.

I'm a big hater of headphones at the home table, as I find it to be antisocial and rude. I usually have last.fm or a cable TV music station running in the background, and I'm always happy to put on what players request.

Hoodies have never been an issue at my games, but a couple of players sometimes wear shades. I don't really care about either much - it's not like these players really need to worry about tells. They have more fundamental problems than something like pursing their lips when their cards suck, and my eyes aren't good enough to see someone's pupils dilating from across the table.

At last year's wsop, I sat between Jeff Shulman and an anonymous hoodie+sunglass+headphone player. Mr. Shulman made it abundantly clear that, in his professional opinion, hoodies sunglasses and headphones are douchey in any context. He had various colorful synonyms for "douchey".

dont forget turtlenecks

...continue...

For all the hickeys? You're playing poker at a high school band retreat?

assuming you weren't being sarcastic:
some players believe you can pick up tells from someone's neck. fast pulse means they're nervous which mean they have a big hand (or they're worried you'll call their huge bluff). unreliable tell imo but... eh to each his own.

Don't forget the swallow tell. Turtlenecks protect that, as well.

Yeah, I gotta say, sunglasses, hoodies, and turtlenecks DO help. Why do you think top pros want us not to wear them?

For my own sake, I feel helping the table be more sociable is +EV, because I get people talking, and they share information, or they soft play me, or whatever. As a winning player, it's good for me to get all that out there, because I can control myself better than you can.

So my advice to everybody is take off the sunglasses and contribute to the social aspect of the game. It applies no matter your skill level: either you're going to get a better edge on your opponents, or I'll get a better edge on you.

unquestionably

Means a monster hand?

Supposedly means a bluff. But I wouldn't say it's very reliable. And it's easily faked.

The problem is that it's not easily unfaked. If you're nervous and your salivary gland is working overtime, not much you can do.

I've found that if you keep a beer nearby, you can swallow during every hand!