Nits who whine and ask the floor for the table to break whenever it's 6 handed or less. I even break it down to them - less waiting, more action, reduced rake. Nope. They just want to sit at a full table so they can fold 95% of the time while doing Sudoko on their tablet.

You continue to show you don't get it. If you won't or can't understand why some usually weak players don't like to play short, then it is literally impossible for you to fully know how you need to adjust short. They are weak but not necessarily stupid. They can't or won't adjust their play so the make the ultimate adjustment and avoid playing short. You otoh think you know it and when you run into players who really do know it will find out just how weak your adjustments are. In those cases, their adjustments to avoid the losing situation will perform better than yours.

Btw if you really think the diffs between full ring and short is minimal you might want ask your self this. If the diffs really are so minimal and simple, why did the entire genre of online 6 max games even develop?

I'm a winning rec player that dislikes playing with 6 or less. I play a little tighter than most here, but I don't think anyone I play with thinks I'm a NIT.

I typically don't get up and leave just because a table gets down to 5 or 6, but there have been times when I was on the fence about staying for a bit longer or leaving and playing short handed pushed me to leave.

People who slowroll you in that special way where after you've shown, say, AJ on a J9XXX board, they flip their cards to expose just a J (with their kicker, or other card, directly under it and fully covered) and allow you to think it'll be a chop before dramatically sliding the top card away to reveal the 9, and pointing to the 9 with their frail nitty fingers as if to say "THIS! THIS IS THE CARD I SLOWROLLED YOU WITH! SUCKER!". I literally hope their families die in grease fires.

I think it's funny the people here think that the most vocal people about keeping a full table are only doing it because they understand WHY they should be doing it. No, they've seen other people complain and now it's their turn to have the power to set everything right with the world.

Some of the most fun I can remember having playing live has been short-handed. 3-handed PLO with ~2000BB on the table, and no one was a nut-peddling nit *****, fun times. Also many times the 2/5 game late at night gets short-handed. It can be fun if the table isn't infested with nits.

When I struggled with this, I decided that I had to figure out two things for it to make sense.

1. Why do I prefer full tables instead of short tables, and am I "doing it wrong?"

That one was easy when I thought about it. I always prefer to play deepstacked, and I can better do that when the blinds hit me fewer times during a level. So, I almost never play 6-max, 9-player tables are better and 10-player tables are best.

2. Since I will be short from time to time, what do I do to figure that situation out?

I decided to count backwords, from the button to UTG, rather than the other way around. So, for example, if I'm at a table with one sit-out and one empty seat, I ignore those. I start with the button and whoever is the next closest active player is effectively the cutoff. If there are only three active players who are not in the blinds, they are the button, cutoff and hijack.

Uh, no offense, but that's like Position 101

Let players take 45 mins for dinner. You miss 3 blinds you get picked up!

It's position 101 when you know it. A lot of things are obvious once you figure them out, or if you read it or watch a coaching video.

When I started playing poker I knew nothing. When I saw two PhDs playing a hand on TV, they would obviously be wasting a lot of time and brainpower if poker was not a game of skill. That's what got me interested.

As far as I knew, I didn't even know anyone that played poker. There was a charity room in my city, in a bowling alley. I never bowled there, so I had no idea. I had never heard of a poker forum. I knew that there was online poker, but I wasn't sure how it worked, and the amounts of money that they talked about on TV scared me.

I went to the library to find poker books. They were all pretty old and didn't seem much like the what the guys on TV were talking about.

I finally started learning when I got a library book with the 2+2 logo on the back, and that led me to the forums. I posted regularly on the Beginners thread, and I was regularly told some version of "you're doing it wrong."

Sometimes they told me that it should be obvious. It wasn't. It was a very long and painful process for me to learn even the most basic things. I was trying to figure it out on my own, just like I did with the concept of position. I knew from TV that whoever acted last had an advantage, but that was all I knew about position.

We aren't born with a concept of position, or pot odds, or any of the other things that are second nature to us now. It was really had to learn about poker when I started from zero in 2005.

EDIT: I wonder if beginners now have the opposite problem. The amount of information might be overwhelming at first. Imagine you were as clueless as I was and Tony Dunst was on TV talking about 4-betting light and balancing ranges.

Sure, but this is an example of why the vast majority of people who read poker books don't become winning players. They don't understand what they're reading.

Position being about how many people act after you (as opposed to where you are relative to the blinds), was intuitive to me once I became aware of the concept. I didn't need a book to explain pot odds once I started thinking analytically about the game. Implied odds, well, that's not quite as intuitive, and I'm still refining my understanding of the concept.

Maybe it's because a high percentage of a certain type of player is always (badly) talking about strategy at the table, but it always bothers me that there are so many people here that think the poker population actually knows a third of what even a casual 2+2 forum member knows about the game.

Someone calling a big bet from their big blind "Well, I have to. Pot odds!"

Someone talking about how they open raised 3x "Well, I three bet...."

People folding their big blinds to a 2.5 BB short stack shove from the button after antes have kicked in. (getting like 5 to 1 on their money)

When a dealer says "small and big blind" even though one or both are already out there.

I hate that.

As a dealer, I'm surprised anyone at all can even hear that phrase. I always thought that specific pattern of sound waves somehow collapse on themselves cancelling it all out and making it impossible for anyone to actually hear.

The only times I have called clock on players in Vegas was because they weren't posting their blinds.

Lol, what does this have to do with two guys who both folded preflop whispering to each other?

I was lucky enough to experience a few peeves the other night.

1. whiny kid (18 - 22) coming over to his dad asking for money because he got felted, when his dad said no, he just kept asking and asking.. must have sad "dad" a hundred times. I felt bad for the dad as he was just wanting to play cards but his whiny brat kid wouldn't STFU and leave the guy alone. Eventually he gave his son $50 to leave him alone.. only to have the kid come back and say "I need $10 more to buy in". Icing on the Cake of Sadness was the kid coming over after he got felted again saying "you won't believe what just happened", "I'm sick to my stomach".. over and over again. It was one of the most cringe-y experiences I've had to deal with.

2. 'Sports Guy' who happens to be a fan of my teams rival, trying to talk to me as if I should agree with him about a particular player.. I final said "listen, I hear ya, it's not changing my opinion.. I'm more knowledgeable than you on this topic and I'm done trying to justify my opinion.. thanks".

3. Being asked to borrow a buy-in. listen lady, I only befriended you because you're a bad player. All I have with me is what's on the table (small bluff) and no I'm not switching tables so that I can give you x-amount without 'taking $ off the table' due to transferring.

this was all in one night, at one table.. and what made it worst was I tried like hell to get the stacks of the three stooges (all friends wearing same team apparel) at the other side of the table.. got a little, but not all like I had hoped.

The crew that changes out the drop-boxes and smash the new ones in so hard that everyone's chips quake.

People lip read, people whisper loud enough to hear, people have whisper tells, etc

But what does that have to do with "show one show all"?

The cryptocurrency conversation popped up again, with the dealer chiming in. One another player finally asked 'What value do these things have, why would anyone buy them?', the dealer gave a condescending look like it was the dumbest question in the world and said 'There's always buyers'.

They didn't appreciate it when I finally got wore down and told them they were buying beanie babies.

high hand promo's hate em

wed 2pm get seated look around table 1-2 game to my left stack sizes
18,34,16,56,144,34,32,119,14 and me bought in for 300 got funny puzzled looks from all
lol
Thursday 1pm sit down
left stacks 60,54,21,19 all white, 27 all white, 46,44,92, and me 300

boy this is poker NOT
walked around room looking for table change both days
7+ tables going not one had more than 400 in chips total on them.

I might as well go to the bingo hall at least I can check out the 70 yr old eye candy !!!!
that's a joke for you pc nits

I remember someone posting it in this thread. Saw an OMC take another player out of a tournament today, all in pre, with the old *point at the board and say 'two pair' after the river comes out*. He was also ahead the entire time.

Thanks for the update, Old Man Coffee.

Wat