The Net’s Most Wanteds

There’s nothing worse than a sore loser, except maybe a sore winner, but either way the lesson behind this kind of proverb is that no one likes a whiner. It’s quite common these days in online poker to see the player who got their 99 in as a coinflip dog against some wild man playing 10 Q offsuit for all the money, then blow up in the poker room chat box about what a donkey this player is, writing in all caps and calling them an idiot, etc. I’m not quite sure what these players intend to gain out of this kind of behavior, as it always ends up making them look awful.

Turn on pretty much any episode of the World Series of Poker, and you will know often very quickly which players are the pros and which ones are the amateurs. So often you see these young balls out players jumping around, screaming their heads off about this or that, and ultimately just making themselves like an 8 year old around the table. Those who’ve been there, seen it, know that in the end, what we’re doing here is gambling, and to follow in the ridiculous footsteps of Phil Hellmuth’s bratty tirades does nothing but make you someone no one wants to play with: or if they still do want to play, it’s just to get that blow up coming again.

I think most any poker player who hasn’t learned this lesson could be improved by remembering that at the end of the day, this is a game, and that there’s no excuse for not being calm, considerate, and cool at the table. Blowing up, whining, and making a fool of yourself make the game that much more trivial, and while making money is important, having fun and being a calm cool guy like Barry Greenstein or Gus Hansen, is just as valuable. I don’t want to sound like my grandmother saying, “Treat people the way you want to be treated,” but for the most part, it is the truth as much in poker as in any other part of life.