A Few of My Favorite Foes

[Still the Spank E]

“Drunkards and weak passives plopped on their fannies, tourists and maniacs, grandpas and grannies, Matt Damon wannabees up to my nose, these are a few of my favorite foes”

Alright, let’s get the list started: who are your favorite and least favorite people to play against in the cardrooms or online? I’m starting a list and I’m checking it twice (I know damn well who’s naughty and nice)!

Note: “Anyone I make money off of” is too obvious a response to be considered for inclusion in this list, so please don’t!

A partial list of my candidates, in no special order, are as follows:

THE DRUNK: this guy wants to throw chips around. He either doesn’t know that you’re good and he’s bad (as well as inebriated); or, remarkably, he DOES know that you’re better than him, but he is convinced that he’ll get the requisite luck to make his ludicrous decision to sit down at the table with you a smart one, as opposed, say, to a DISASTROUS one;

THE “OLDER PLAYER:” This is not true of ALL “mature” players, but many of our elder players do seem to think that “any suited pair” is a good way of spending one’s retirement money: ditto any Ace and, for some of them, any King. You get to watch their chip stacks fluctuate throughout the course of the session, and while you’re tempted to tell them that this would not happen to them so much if they showed the least bit of decorum the next time J3s paid them a visit, it’s 50/50 whether you’re making more money from them for all the times this hand doesn’t pan out for them, or losing more every time YOU get drawn out on (obviously you’d be making money on them heads-up, but against a group of them it can be a challenge). Interesting note: many of our “senior ambassadors to the game” seem content to play at the betting level they began playing at under the Eisenhower administration, happily oblivious to how big a chunk of their earnings the rake is gouging them for. Gotta love ‘em!

JOE COLLEGE: Now, I went to college. I just prefer to think that I didn’t have SOPHOMORE YEAR GAMBLING BINGE written in blood-red, forehead-high letters across my frontal lobes. (I didn’t play poker in those days, actually.) These guys can be the life of the table, but they can be a pain in the back pocket, too (assuming that’s where you keep your wallet). When a couple of these Faber House-wannabees get to raising each other (and, more importantly, YOU ) out of the pot, the money-making mood can take a decidedly downward swing. Sometimes when you’ve been at the table for enough hours, their buoyant cheer can be more of a trial than anything else.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of entries on this topic. Please feel free to contribute.