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04.27.06
Tension Chords
posted by Absinthe | 12:11 PM
They just don’t speak the language.
It’s that simple. That’s why they drive us crazy. PokerChamp’s term for a fish (a “tourist”) is more accurate than NeverBluff woulda realized. The fishy amateur is an Ugly American. We persist in the belief that our bets and raises mean something - and they do, to a trained ear, or at least they can usually be narrowed to a very limited range of meanings - but when they fall on deaf ears, it drives us to frustration.
When we bet TPTK on the turn and get checkraised, we have a pretty strong indication that we’re beat, but depending on the board we’ve often got to call it down anyway. Say we’re holding AJ, the board is J459, we call the checkraise, a queen comes out on the river, we make a crying call and our opponent turns over KQ (or worse, AQ). Against an experienced player, this is only a mild irritant - he was bluffing, he got caught, he got lucky. But against a novice the random unfairness of it all seems particularly galling.
Worse, when someone’s actions completely baffle us - because they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t understand when they should raise or call - well, it’s like a tilt factory. A gamb00ler who’ll cap with any pair or draw is at least comprehensible, if usually wrong, but when someone caps the nuts on the turn and then check-calls the river, our brains rebel at the ugliness even when we should be thankful for a saved bet or two.
Imagine a conversation like this:
Player A says, “Hello, would you like a piece of fruit?”
Player B slaps Player A with a frozen mackerel.
Player A says, “@#$% gutshot @!#^!!????”
As you can see, this cognitive dissonance is far worse for someone who speaks the language than for someone who doesn’t. You think you’re having a conversation with somebody and the next thing you know you’re wiping cold scales off your bloody cheek. Wanna annoy a musician? Go to the nearest piano and play a C chord, a D minor chord, a G chord… and then stop. The guy who runs up and angrily plays a C chord, he’s the musician, and the unresolved chord sequence will drive him nuts. The tourists are just happy to be there in your strange, exotic land, and by chance every now and again they get shipped a pot that lets them feel like they’re native-born.
The absolute worst part? This is a problem you can’t afford to solve. Teaching someone the language makes them a better player. The less the people at the table with you know, the more aggravating their aimless play, the better the game is for you. When you know the math cold and have faith in your ability to make a good read, the next big step is accepting that the more maddening the game is, the better.
Some players, mostly online, try to taunt their lucky opponents. The Internet is a playground for yobs with poor anger management skills, and some of them would be great players if they could get past the urge to fix what’s broken about their opponents’ games. But they never will. Because they don’t speak the language either.
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Topics: Poker |
April 27, 2006 at 12:42 PM
If only my bets and raises could keep me from being hit with frozen mackerels.
April 27, 2006 at 3:13 PM
I give this post an A+.
And I’m not speaking in some weird language where “A” stands for “Awful”.
April 28, 2006 at 6:52 PM
Excellent post. Not only is it better to not teach those guys the language, when you berate them and get angry you alter your mindset, making it harder for you to play correctly.
May 1, 2006 at 12:34 PM
I always have my “nice hand sir” chat macro at the ready when beats come my way.
May 1, 2006 at 2:07 PM
So the fruit got sucked out by a gutshot mackerel. What beats a mackerel? That was on Party, wasn’t it. Great post. You’re completely right. If they actually learn how to play, that makes the game harder for you. Just keep the Tourist filter on and trust your reads through that, and you should be +EV.