No Time To Talk
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Dara O'Kearney on when to shut up.
Poker is an unusually lonely profession. If you're an online poker pro, you basically have no work colleagues, and everyone who does the same job as you is a direct competitor. Human beings don't like isolation as a rule, so most of us who do this for a living go to considerable efforts to befriend and socialise with at least a few other pros. Close knit groups of anywhere from two to eight players that talk shop together, buy and swap pieces of each other, travel to live events and room and socialise together spring up. Outside these groups, most pros have a wider circle of friends and acquaintances they will go for a meal or a drink with when they find themselves stuck in the same place at a loose end. These networks are not only important socially but also professionally. Skype chat groups where players bounce hand histories off each other for discussion and dissection are an invaluable learning tool, and a way of staying if not ahead then at least not too far behind the curve.
There's a natural human instinct to share experiences with similar people to ourselves. It's healthy and fulfilling, but it also has a time and place. That time and place is not, in my opinion at least, in the heat of battle at a live poker table. I see it time and time again: two young pros who have never met in person before find themselves at the same table. After a little chit chat to break the ice, they swap screen names. Delighted to find someone they can relate to, they immediately start talking strategy. They assume the recreational players don't even know what they are talking about because like every other human niche of specialisation, poker has developed it's own jargon. They start dissecting their own play and that of others at the table between hands. They talk about balanced or uncapped ranges, cool cold 4-bet spots and fishy donk bets. They may even use pejorative terms to describe the play of other players at the table, assuming that nobody at the table can penetrate the jargon and understand what they are saying.
Even if that's true (and in my experience, it rarely is; access to the latest poker strategy has never been easier and you might be surprised how many recreational players look at online forums, training videos or magazines such as this one), it's still never a good idea to visibly lord your self-perception as strategically superior to all of your rivals except that one guy you just befriended who grinds the same $20 online freezeouts as you. Human nature being what it is, people do not enjoy being talked down to, and will react in a variety of ways. Even if you don't annoy them into outright hostility (and that's always a possibility), none of the possible outcomes are good for the pro.
In the short term, they may realize that since you are better than them, so they need to be more careful and avoid tough spots against you. Good luck exploiting your perceived edge over a recreational player if he just decides to nit it up. A much more productive approach which you see a lot of old school live pros use is to get into some friendly banter with the weaker players at your table. Showing them a bluff or reacting in good humour if they bluff you (or think they did) encourages them to loosen up and get into more pots against you because that's a lot more fun than playing against the kid in the hoodie and shades having a clever-off with the other kid in the hoodie and shades beside him.
In the medium term, your ignored opponent may decide he needs to get better to be competitive. Next time you see him, he might not be spewing chips or bluffing in bad spots because you basically told him he had to get better. Good for him. Bad for you.
In the long term, he may simply decide that, based on your words, you and your fellow zinc-deficient friend are too good for him and he won't come back. Since poker is a minus sum game (zero minus the rake), this is the worst outcome if you're a pro whose livelihood depends on recreational players being willing to give up an edge so long as they feel they can they at least have some chance, and will have a good time either way. Being talked down to or dismissed is not most people's idea of a good time. The day that live events are almost exclusively populated by the biggest online winners talking and playing optimally is the day we can all pack up and go home.
So guys, by all means get together and discuss strategy. But keep it to the Skype groups or at least to the breaks.