Monday, October 1, 2007
The First Rule of Life (As Told By a Stripper)
it is morally imperative to separate an idiot from his or her money.
Easily applicable to poker, no? I always thought so. Learn the game or get run over. But not everybody agrees.
Got a buddy who WILL NOT play $1/$2 NL with us. He 'doesn't like taking money from friends'. He softplays. (still not sure if it's because he's not a strong player or it's his allegation that he 'just likes the game and not the money'.
I am the opposite. When I'm at the table with people I know, (Chad/Mike/Amir/Josh/Bert/etc you know who you are) the money won is sweeter. It just feels better to know I outplayed somebody on a flop, and I know my friends can play.
Amir and I would play 1/2NL at a local cardroom, and one fine evening, a newcomer saw that we (randomly) sat next to each other in the $50 weekly tournament, talked to each other (looking for tells), and generally had more fun than our stone-faced opponents. He accused us of collusion/softplaying. Before either of us could speak up, the rest of the regulars laughed at him and told him that we competed harder than anybody when it came to poker. Truth.
I can't count the number of time in cash games we get in blind-on-blind battles, stealing and restealing with TRASH hands, and shoving with bottom pair when we smelled blood in the water. Those are my FONDEST memories of this game. Not the robotic nature of online SSNL, but playing people I know well, knowing their reactions, getting reads, and using body language to make borderline calls or folds. It also why I make sure to always talk to my live opponents when I've folded a live hand, just to get a baseline read on how they handle themselves. I guess that's what you have to do when you're 'Breathing In' (vorhaus again) to a new game, which is the perpetual state online.
Anyway, I miss live poker. And I would never, ever softplay people in a game. Dammit, I guess I would hesitate to make excessive value bets with the nuts against a good friend whom I knew was a rookie. Shit. Gotta crush out that last twinge of compassion. :D
Easily applicable to poker, no? I always thought so. Learn the game or get run over. But not everybody agrees.
Got a buddy who WILL NOT play $1/$2 NL with us. He 'doesn't like taking money from friends'. He softplays. (still not sure if it's because he's not a strong player or it's his allegation that he 'just likes the game and not the money'.
I am the opposite. When I'm at the table with people I know, (Chad/Mike/Amir/Josh/Bert/etc you know who you are) the money won is sweeter. It just feels better to know I outplayed somebody on a flop, and I know my friends can play.
Amir and I would play 1/2NL at a local cardroom, and one fine evening, a newcomer saw that we (randomly) sat next to each other in the $50 weekly tournament, talked to each other (looking for tells), and generally had more fun than our stone-faced opponents. He accused us of collusion/softplaying. Before either of us could speak up, the rest of the regulars laughed at him and told him that we competed harder than anybody when it came to poker. Truth.
I can't count the number of time in cash games we get in blind-on-blind battles, stealing and restealing with TRASH hands, and shoving with bottom pair when we smelled blood in the water. Those are my FONDEST memories of this game. Not the robotic nature of online SSNL, but playing people I know well, knowing their reactions, getting reads, and using body language to make borderline calls or folds. It also why I make sure to always talk to my live opponents when I've folded a live hand, just to get a baseline read on how they handle themselves. I guess that's what you have to do when you're 'Breathing In' (vorhaus again) to a new game, which is the perpetual state online.
Anyway, I miss live poker. And I would never, ever softplay people in a game. Dammit, I guess I would hesitate to make excessive value bets with the nuts against a good friend whom I knew was a rookie. Shit. Gotta crush out that last twinge of compassion. :D
# posted by OneGreenChip : 10:30 AM
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