Michael Craig's Journal

As I’ve referenced in a few recent posts, I’ve been playing a lot on Full Tilt Poker during the last ten days. With the FTOPS running through the weekend, I’ll be playing a bunch more. Look for me tonight at the Razz event, on Sunday in the Main Event, and probably a bunch of other tournaments.

As I pointed out in a pair of posts last week, I was briefly … A God. I’m no longer a poker deity but I’m still doing okay. I won a seat in the FTOPS Main Event and made some bottom-money in other tournaments. I’ve mostly been hanging around a long time in these tournaments.

I don’t know if it’s my tournament style or the influx of new players on the site, but I’m increasingly finding a lot of nasty players on the site - guys who want to complain about how other people play.

I don’t get that AT ALL. First, why educate people who are making mistakes? If someone makes some ridiculous calls and accumulates a lot of chips, I want to use that information to get those chips. It interferes with my ability (and theirs!) to do that if they are ragging on this guy and he starts tightening up because he is embarrassed by his inexperienced play. I want that player EMBOLDENED, not ASHAMED.

Second, why give away information about your own play? These players invariably are one level above the beginners they are criticizing, playing at the lowest, most basic level of competence. They play only very strong cards and bet their strength, except when they are VERY strong, in which case they make some transparent “tricky” move like betting 160 into a 4,000 chip pot.

They can’t possibly realize it, but when they complain about someone making a play that doesn’t fit their A-B-C style, they are telegraphing how they play.

Third - as an inevitable result of “second” - they often have no idea what they are talking about.

Connected with that is the bizarre behavior of players who bust out and stick around to criticize the player who busted them. I’ve seen all these behaviors for as long as I’ve been playing online, but it seems Full Tilt has become infected with them recently. 

Here is an example (as I am a magnet for this kind of thing):

I’m in one of the Full Tilt double-stack tournaments, where we start with 3,000 chips. It’s in the first hour of play, blinds are 40-80. I’m in the small blind, with 7,800 in chips. The chip-average is about 4,500. The cut-off raises to 240. The button flat-calls. I have 5c-3c. There is 600 in the pot and I think the big blind will call if I call.

Calling 200 seems like a no-brainer to me with these deep stacks. The raiser  and the flat-caller each have over 7,000 chips. The implied odds for hitting my hand against aces or kings are gigantic, and I’m getting 3-to-1 right now. And it’s an easy hand to get away from on the flop if I don’t hit.

As I’m contemplating the kind of flop I need to catch, I see the big blind has called and the flop is 3h-5s-Ac. The raiser bets the pot, 960, and the button folds.

I want to test the raiser by raising him. If he has aces, he’ll move in on me. If he has a medium pocket pair, I’m probably not getting any more from him anyway. I made the minimum raise, to 1,920. He insta-all-in-re-raises.

I call. He has A-J. (A-J? I’d think A-J is, at best, a crying call to a minimum re-raise.) I win a pot of 16,000 chips and take over the tournament chip-lead.

The guy who loses is beside himself. His nastiness was unending - I’m a terrible player, he can’t wait to see me bust, calling bets like that are why I’m obviously a losing player, this must be my first tournament ever, I’m a fish, I’m a donkey, I suck, he “looked me up” someplace and confirmed I’m a losing player. (I actually had a few players I busted in the last few days claim they looked me up someplace and discovered I was a losing player. Where are they looking? I’m on Full Tilt’s tournament leaderboard for the month and that’s the only place I know of where you can check.)

More important is WHY? What do you gain by complaining when you lose? Or by complaining when someone else loses? (Another player took up Mr. Busted’s cause and told me I was a moron for calling off a quarter of my chips before the flop [200 out of 7,400?] with 3-5.) It seems bad for the game and bad for your own enjoyment.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 6:36 pm and is filed under My favourites:.