Thursday, July 26, 2007

Don't Abuse the Fish

Everyone has heard this advice so many times that it's gets boring: "Don't tap the glass. You want to keep poor players at your table. Don't scare them off."

Personally, I'm not too concerned whether a particular fish stays or not. That may sound naive, but when you're playing 12 tables there are 96 other seats with players coming and going all the time so it's not worth bothering too much over any one individual. Besides if he did leave my table there's a good chance he'll sit down at another table where I'm playing anyway.

When you play so many full-handed cash hands each day, there is VERY little variance from month-to-month. Therefore, in the course of a month, you will win close to 80% of your 80/20s, and close to 90% of your 90/10s, and close to 96% of your 96/4s. The point is, it's not worth getting emotional about any pot that you lose as a favourite.

Although it's difficult, I try and remain calm and remove any emotions from my game. This means if I am to avoid getting frustrated when I lose a $500 pot with AA v KK all-in pre-flop, I also have to avoid any elation when I win such a pot. This frame of mind, in theory, should enable me to play my optimal game.

However, too often I find myself abusing the fish, with typical lines such as "You fucking useless cunt" or "You lucky fucking prick" when I should be remaining level-headed. The detrimental effect that this has is not reserved solely for the lack of emotional control. It often leads me onto pointless arguments which further distracts from my game- especially when I time out on my other tables.

Currently, I have simultaneous chat bans on Full Tilt and Pokerstars! I'd like to thanks Highstacks for his help with the Pokerstars one! :) This ban appears to have helped my game though. I am no longer able to abuse the fish and get side-tracked attempting to explain to vegetables why their play was terrible. I also don't have to feel bad later on for having called someone a useless fucker. I won't be requesting to have my chat privileges re-instated at the end of the 30-day period.

So my advice to multi-tablers is to either turn your chat off, or call everyone a cunt until you get chat-banned. :)

On a more important note, I've just taken a couple of photos of a great pair of tits which I'll post tomorrow.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

kinda interested how you do stay calm actually, last month for example i won roughly 375 quid on stts, but lost 360 on cash in just over 30 mins after busting out in true bad beat style in a 5 buck mtt lool

oh and if you have no view on that ill just check back for the tits :-)

snap

Smart Money said...

The thing is mate, when you only play for 30 minutes here and there your variance is going to be high. You may only have two 80/20s all month and if you lose them both then it's hard to take.

Whereas if you see 100 of them during that time period then that's a large enough sample for it all to average out and so it isn't worth wasting much effort on any particular hand.

Anonymous said...

Man I can really relate to that post. I just came off a losing streak where I abused every fish that happened to give me a bad beat.

I resorted to almost every profanity I could think of and a few people at the table were offended. It wasn't until I calmed down later that I began to understand that I was only getting angry at the cards, but I was taking it out on an unsuspecting victim who happened to get a lucky break from the likely monotony of losing to better players.

Lately I've been trying to control my temper but sometimes its hard to deny the immediate temptation to say what I really think, mainly that the fish who dealt me a bad beat is a useless fucking moron.

Anonymous said...

yeah i just called them cunts and got chat banned lol

Smart Money said...

It's not big, and it's not clever.

(But it is funny.)