For those who make their money providing entertainment to others, being polite, hospitable, fun, etc. would seem to be essential to and go hand-in-hand with whatever services they are providing.

But this isn't just true of the entertainment industry, it's also true of any business/profession in the world, from serving fast food to teaching golf or art to others, all the way to being a politician or corporate CEO. No matter what product or service you are offering to others in business, how you behave and the environment/atmosphere you create affect customer loyalty.

In poker (particularly, live games), have you seen a decrease in table etiquette, fun, and hospitality over the years, particularly as games have gotten tougher?

If so, wouldn't this be the opposite of what one would expect in business evolution? As competition in any business got tougher or an industry was shrinking, wouldn't businessmen want to do everything possible to grow/add value to their product or service to increase customer loyalty and/or grow new demand?

One would expect that as businesses evolved and grew that they got better over time in various facets of their services or product offerings, including things like hospitality.

Do you guys see professional poker players, overall (notwithstanding occasional grumpy or rude players, etc.), getting better in the etiquette, hospitality, and "fun creation" department?

If so, how so? If not, why and how not?

If you watch wsop coverage, you can see p.hellmuth offering ice cream to the feature table. If you consider we live in a pretty tuff time (pokerwise), i think this is a perfect example of how to behave @ the table

I think it would have been better if you'd written "...In live poker,..." to forestall the derail replies comparing live with online.

Also... how would you answer your own question jmallflush? [I myself don't have the live experience to form an opinion on the subject]

Darn... just realised you're the "32-threads-started-out-of-85-posts guy

I think most poker tables give off a vibe of "This is serious business going on here and you shouldn't be here if you don't know what you're doing." Headphones and talk of strategy dominate every table.

If someone is looking to go out, have a few drinks, have a good time, and gamble some money then a $10 blackjack table is typically 100x more appealing than a 1/3 NL table. I don't think that is due to the inherent differences between poker and blackjack. I think it's due to the environment created by the respective players.

Fun decreased big time...online and live.

In the early ages of online poker you couldn't multi table more the few tables..people actualy chatted active an entire session and it was fun.

Live nowadays the cool guy's have headphones others texting some look movie's how it could be more fun now then back in the day's.
I try bto make it fun live while entertaining some people and anoy the rest but i don't care i think it's important to have a fun game.There would be more fish around iff everybody got some more fun.

I havent noticed a decline in those things.

EDIT: Nevermind.

there has got to be this same thread around here somewhere . and in that thread there is someone asking if the same thread is around there somewhere.

As a semi reg at 5/10 ..10/20 PS tables I will often try to talk or even say "nice hand" and for the most part most of those guys suck. How hard is it to be nice ! ,,,Now live is a different story ..I mostly play cash and if you add a few beers to the mix it makes for a fun night ..........Every once and awhile you will run into a dead table but you need to keep the jokes coming !

I haven't played cash poker in years.

I played both live and online cash game poker pre-Black Friday for a couple of years. I was a small winner live (a few thousand) and small loser online (few hundred).

Not sure if this would be at all useful or relevant to the discussion, but back when I played live cash games, the behavior was atrocious at times and fun at other times.

The worst experiences I had were almost always during the night time. The crowds were different. There were many more older players during the day, who looked either retired, had night/grave yard shift jobs, or were in for a short lunch break. Everyone wanted to win, but the chatter was usually playful.

You would hear people saying stuff like:

"Uh oh, watch out, XYZ, has a big stack. He's gonna bully us now." (said with a smile)

"Hey, you opening a bank anytime soon." (said to the winning player/big stack)

"I keep having sessions like this and I'm going for early retirement!" (a winning player might say that)

Anything "negative" at the table was usually along the lines of:

"Man, I've been on a bad run lately."

"Been a rough week. I keep getting my Aces cracked."

Rarely, you might hear someone who got sucked out on say:

"Keep chasing those draws buddy. You'll be broke in no time."

These negative comments seemed to be more rare.

The night crowd was very different. Many more younger players and rudeness at the tables. You'd see people calling others idiots right after losing a big pot. The second month I played, I remember losing about $725 (90% of my stack) dollars (in a $200 buy-in game) when I called flop/turn/river bets with AK to another experienced guy's KQ. The board was like KQ247 rainbow.

Immediately, a regular player, who seemed to be friends with the winning player (KQ) berated me. He said:

What do you think he was betting and raising you with? There's no draw. It's obvious he had a set or two-pair! Did you even think? *expletive*

Others at the table chimed in making fun of me later too. I felt awful. Just lost a big pot and it seemed like the entire table was making fun of me.

Another time (when I was a new player), I had made a big call down and lost several hundred bucks and was berated again, but an experienced and winning player stepped in and stopped the abuser. He said:

"No! (gave the abuser a stern look of disapproval) Let people play their hands the way they want. You gotta stop that!"

I noticed this guy, who stepped in, seemed (I could be wrong) to be one of the biggest winners in the "big game" on the floor in the brief time that I observed him. He stopped playing shortly afterwards and would only come in once every few months (I thought maybe he moved to online play). But I observed dealers talking to him about how much money he'd won.

The night crowd was just much more raucous with "sore losers" berating players who had played badly and won and even, worse, winning players disparaging the loser players for poor play right after raking in their pots. I don't think people had any notion whatsoever of "customer service."

Outside of the one guy I talked about stepping in to stop an abusive player, I frequently saw winning (overall) players berating people who played poorly (in specific hands). Some would whine about it the entire session and look to get back at those players who got lucky.

I think probably 99% of the players I saw had zero sense of "customer service" to their poker games. Even players who didn't berate others practically never tried to make the game fun and enjoyable for others.

I'm not sure what effect this had on losing (or even winning) players. I still saw regular losing players return. The again, if a guy was abused and never came back, I wouldn't have known it. I didn't take note of those things. But if a person was losing and came back, I did see that.

A lot of the "fun" that I saw or experienced with the night players was usually between players who knew each other already. You would get guys joking about beating each other in playful ways. It tended to be playful competitive banter.

But, I'm not sure if I ever saw a winning player try and make a losing or new player more comfortable or have more fun. The playful stuff was generally between known regulars.

Occasionally, though, you'd have a naturally funny person at the time, who would make jokes or other playful comments that would instantly lighten the mood at the table. Those guys seemed more rare. But, I'm not sure if that funny person was ever intentionally doing that to make losing or new players more comfortable or just doing it out of fun in general.

Trying to be nice at a game where the object is to take each other's money comes off as disingenuine. It's like how everybody knows that cute waitress is only smiling at you and being extra nice because she wants better tokes, not because she wants your dick.

It's all fake and super transparent. Just be natural. If you're a nice person, great. But if you're a prick who has to expend a ton of energy for +EV, don't bother. The fish at the table are only fish at poker most of the time. Giving off this salesman-type vibe at the table can be insulting.

What's more insulting to you: a stranger casually starting a conversation with you at the table to find a common ground other than the game you're playing or someone actually insulting you about the way you play it?

This.

My local game seems to be dieing and it's not surprising me at all. As probably the second biggest winner in this game, I feel it's my job to make sure people feel they're having a good time and don't ever feel attacked or critiqued for their poor play.

Every time somebody makes a bad play and wins someone will start whining, and a few people will joke about it (once the person leaves the table for a brief moment however, they don't normally insult people to their face). Even then though, the rest of the table can blatantly see the other person being persecuted behind his back and may feel very unwelcome or scared to play bad knowing people will talk behind their backs.

I never get mad at anybody, and after somebody beats me out of a big pot by doing something horrendously awful, I simply smile, laugh, say nice hand, and maybe even give the guy a fist bump and/or say "Ah man! Couldn't put you on that, nice hand man".

If they feel bad when they're losing AND they feel bad even when they're winning, at what point does a fish actually even enjoy being at the table?

That being said, I admit I haven't really gone out of my way to defend anybody because on the other hand I don't necessarily want the rest of the table (who aren't that amazing themselves) to feel like I'm attacking them for jabbering among themselves about others poor play.

I may try to start subtly drop hints on it or possibly pull a few regs aside and talk to them about it. Like he noted, it's hard to know what effect it really has because you don't know why/if people aren't coming back.

Edit:

FWIW I don't think anybody I talk to at the table feels like I'm a "salesman" to them. Just be genuinely nice and friendly like you would at any other job (where you obviously benefit from them liking you, but it doesn't prevent that from inhibiting your ability to be a nice person and have them actually think you're a nice person).

Insightful as ever Art! ;-)

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...ioned-1426358/

You try to say nh sometimes? You are one friendly dude.

seems to me more of a divide between old school smalltime guys like me and young walking cliche 3 betting kids ,you see im more the type ...sports coat gold chain ,polite,tough ,womanizer ,and todays kid is more ,entitled,arragant,aggro,dressed poorly ,lets create a better pro poker player image thru better dress and better banter ,what do you guys think....... its for the betterment of game bighitters.

Is there any other game in which players berate others for bad play that should profit them?

Blackjack dealers don't say:

"You idiot! Keep playing like that and you'll be broke!"

after a player beats the house in some lucky hand. The dealer/house would probably want to buy that player drinks and have them keep playing the same way.

In a chess match, after like Topalov loses to Kramnik, you won't see Kramnik say how stupid Topalov played. Any discussion of the play is always civil and focused on analysis.

Something about poker is just weird in how people will berate others for playing poorly and getting lucky, when it is precisely people playing poorly that leads to better players winning (long-term).

Why would a blackjack dealer care if the player beats the house, other than to be happy about an increased chance of a tip?

Do you think that the top/championship level of chess is representative of all amateur and club levels, and never a rude word is spoken?

Anyway, when somebody plays poorly and gets lucky in poker, it's at the expense of other players who likely won't enjoy the long run reversal. Which isn't to justify/condone rude/angry behavior, but your examples aren't comparable.

Not if you're defining etiquette and fun as you seem to be defining them: as salesmanship for attracting/retaining casual players. If there are less of those, there's less of a need for the salesmanship.

Yeah it's obviously gotten worse . The change comes when the game goes from a way to gamble/have fun to a way to make money. Playing to make money live turns most people into Sour nits :/

Not overall and probably still as bad as it has ever been. These pros spend way too long in front of a computer...

The problem is that poker is a very attractive place for those who have social disfunction that make it hard for them in the normal workplace. In the old days we just kicked that kind out of the games. In casinos you can't kick them so we have more and more kids with social disabilities entering poker every year.

It's really just this

lol the whole table laughed at you and swore/berated you for losing a pot? And you wernt a complete tool/douchenozzle making it 100% warranted?

Ive never seen that happen in 7 years of live poker. Like ive seen the winner and loser of the pot go at it, but i feel like thats OK as long as its not caustic.

If some 3rd party comes in and starts berating the fish im going to BERATE the guy doing it. I like making the fish feel like they are a part of the game. Im usually drinking and I love confrontation so i love confronting bullies at the table.

Its poker LOL its mostly nerds and introverts with low social skills, just smash them verbally by making them feel like a drooler, make others laugh at them.

The good old days weren't always good.