Poker No-No: Don’t Scare the Fish!
So you’re at a table playing a cash poker game, you get all the money in against a player who clearly doesn’t know what he is doing. He has two outs, and you are golden to double up. Then, as will the poker gods entail, he hits one of the two outs on the river and takes all your money, rolling in his stupor from broke to scooping the whole pot. It just burns doesn’t it? It just makes you want to quit the game and take up knitting!
So rather than rebuy back at the table, stay on your A game, and get your money back from the donk, you go into whine mode, and you zonk the donkey player over the head with insults and whining, telling the fish what a bad player he is to be playing King Ten offsuit out of position for a raise, and on and on.
What are you doing? Don’t you want to play against this kind of player? What, are you hoping that he’ll take your advice and start playing well, so that you don’t get a chance to put any more of your money in the pot with killer odds against him? Or do you just want him to get up and leave and not take any more of those ridiculous two outer hands to bat against you?
No, you want this guy at the poker table. You want the fish to be there to get it all in with almost no outs. So don’t scare the fish! Keep your mouth shut, move on to the next hand, and get ready to get your money back in full, and then some. There’s nothing worse than a player who can’t take a beat without berating the newbie and letting him know that what he’s doing is going to, in the long run, make him broke.
Let the fishies swim. It all works out in the wash.
