A question for Lou Krieger

[zuluking]

Could you direct me to any articles on why jacka$$es, live and online, would berate bad players so much? Bad players are my best friends when it comes to poker. It still baffles me why any good player would even consider telling a bad one that his/her play sucks/sucked.

[Al Schoonmaker]

Hi,
Lou doesn't come to this forum too often, but I will let him know about your post. I don't know of any articles that deal directly with your question, but Lou can probably suggest a few. In the interim I'll offer a partial answer.
1. MANY people -- in all situations -- get great pleasure from putting down others. They build themselves up by tearing others down. The very abundant research on racial prejudice explains some of the underling motivations. For example, the most prejudiced people are NOT prosperous. They are marginal or submarginal. They need to knock those "beneath" them because they are failures or near failures.
2. Bad players contribute to the income of good players, but they also cause the most frustrating bad beats. The idiot who calls three bets cold with 72 and makes two pair on the river to crack your aces is certainly going to lose money, but that beat really stings. When people get frustrated, they attack others, especially those who seem to cause their frustration. Lou wrote an article some time ago called "A typical hand" or somethin like that. It said that he raised with the best hand and won. Nobody noticed it, because it's what usually happens. We notice bad beats MUCH more.
Regards,
Al

[zuluking]

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Redhot_man]

is this a sly way of saying lou berates bad players?

[bomblade]

Interesting reading this post because this very situation came up this past week. I'm playing in the typical 20-40 game I usually play in. There's always a few fish, and everyone welcomes this. There was an exceptionally bad player, who had played a few exceptionally bad plays that had one him some exceptionally huge pots. I am guessing he was only up a rack or two, even though he had 8 racks in front of him. One particular play, he stuck it to one of the players. One of the other players, who wasn't in the hand, but was drinking (as usual) and was talking and yelling (as usual), started yelling at him. He wasn't just commenting on his play, but commenting on his character. He was asking him why he hates money and why he is such a fish. These types of comments. One of the other players, who knew this man, continually told him to shut up, and in another language, explained to him that you don't tell a fish they're a fish. After all the berating, you could see the look on the other players face and tell he was crushed and felt completely belittled.
The result: The poor player saw 60% preflop, raised 30 percent, and would 3 bet no matter what he had. He admitted that he wanted to juice up pots. After the attack, he saw maybe 25 percent, rarely raised, and never 3 bet. Many of the other players weren't too happy, until about 2 hours later, when he went back to normal, and lost all his money and called for another rack.
This was the greatest scenario I've ever been a part of that showed why you don't tell a fish that they're a fish.

[zuluking]

I've never played with or met Lou.

THAT senerio is EXACTLY what I'm talking about! Why would anyone want to "give it" to this guy? Let him play and compliment him on the big pots he wins.

[zuluking]

As I write this tonight, I'm online at Party Poker playing 3-6. There are 6-7 seeing the flop everytime. ONE Jacka$$ is berating the fish hand after hand. I wish they had IM on PP so I could tell him to SHUT THE F%^K UP!

[muzungu]

Zulu-

they do, in effect, and I use it from time to time for this exact purpose. Put the offender on your buddy list. You can then contact them to "invite them to a table". Along with this there is space for text, where you can tell them to stop scaring away the easy money.

-muz

[bukkrukk]

Any ideas what to say to the berating player when your site don´t have any IM or buddy lists. When you have take in the main chat?

I´ll usually try to defend the fish with something like "any two cards can win" or "it was a large pot". It usually results in me getting called down the rest of the session.

[symphonic]

Other than trying to keep the fish in the game, it's also common courtesy to not do stuff like that. That person is at the game to have fun and maybe make a little money, and the person berating him is probably going to ruin his time there by being a jackass. That's just ignorant.