Shutting up the Table Coach

[felson]

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"I hope your baby dies of cancer"

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Thats just plain mean. But wtf maybe i´m a wuss.

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No, I agree with you. The worst feeling in the world would be if the guy said, "actually, my nephew just did."

[BarronVangorToth]

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"I hope your baby dies of cancer"

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I think he wanted original lines, not ones straight out of Dale Carnegie.

Barron Vangor Toth
www.BarronVangorToth.com

[ddss6_99]

"Sorry for my bad play, I'm a little under the wheather, so, what's your excuse?"

[CrisBrown]

Hi Fred,

Actually, Internet wonkitude notwithstanding, the correct German sentence for JFK would have been "Ich bin Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"). It was no different from what Gerhard Shröder said on 9/11/2001: "Today, we are all Americans."

"Ich bin ein Berliner" does not mean "I am one with the people of Berlin." It was a misstatement. That's fine. JFK wasn't a German-speaker, and he was relying on what speechwriters and language coaches had told him. Everyone knew what he meant by it, and they heard what he meant and not what he said.

Don't believe everything you read on urban legend websites. Some of what you read there is every bit as much "urban legend" as the urban legends they purport to debunk.

Cris

[Fred Garvin]

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Actually, Internet wonkitude notwithstanding, the correct German sentence for JFK would have been "Ich bin Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"). It was no different from what Gerhard Shröder said on 9/11/2001: "Today, we are all Americans."

"Ich bin ein Berliner" does not mean "I am one with the people of Berlin." It was a misstatement. That's fine. JFK wasn't a German-speaker, and he was relying on what speechwriters and language coaches had told him. Everyone knew what he meant by it, and they heard what he meant and not what he said.

Don't believe everything you read on urban legend websites. Some of what you read there is every bit as much "urban legend" as the urban legends they purport to debunk.

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Do you speak German or just pretend to on the internet?

This moronicism has been treated in a scholarly journal: J. Eichhoff, "'Ich bin ein Berliner': A History and a linguistic Clarification," _Monatshefte_, Vol. 85, No. 1, 1993, pp. 71-80. It's fraudulent roots are apparently from a _Newsweek_ article, January 18, 1988, p. 15.

Your argument is a gone-wrong counterfactual based on ignorance. "Ich bin Berliner," literally means, "I am from Berlin." "I am a Berliner, too" -- would capture the spirit hoped for in English, but German works differently, and in German "Ich bin ein Berliner" is appropriate. Does the phrase mean, "I am a jelly donut?" -- Well, only to those willfully misinterpreting it -- a group that boasts you as victim and apologist. For presumably cheap political points, people worked backward from a willful misrepresentation, and found a linguistic explanation for a non-existent confusion.

So I have a scholarly source. You have a misguided analogy to the English language, amusing on many levels.

To the posters that question my antagonism I can only say: it seems appropriate when dealing with someone so adamantly and persistently foolish.

PS In Berlin, the pasty in question is "Pfannkuchen."

(BTW, I'm not a fan of JFK. I'm just tired of this specific slice of stupidity.)

[goldcowboy]

"I hate when the whiskey makes me play that way. <hic>"

"Thanks you for your insight. I now see that I have been playing badly. In fact I am sure my stupidity has been an embarassment to the entire table and I must apologize. Please forgive me."

[tek]

Once again, a good thread goes off on a tangent... [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[Mojo, The Programmer]

Let the player believe you are sincerely sorry for taking the pot from him/her with something like:

"Oh man... I totally misread you there..."

And then proceed to let that person tell you all about "the way to play poker."

It's even better when they give you a "table nickname." This happened to a buddy of mine, who was advised from a TC to "stop watching TV... this isn't Hollywood." That TC called him "Hollywood" all night long, and lost several large pots to him. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[golFUR]

It takes a certain special mentality to be a table coach.

If you are playing live one fun thing to do is just to be earnest and play it back at em. Apologize when you 'win a lucky one'. Draw them out on their advice, ask leading questions, appear to be very interested. Everyone will see immediately what you are doing, they will let you and observe gleefully. He will be the last person to catch on and it will be all the more priceless for it.

Another one that is difficult to do online, easier live, is to point out the ridiculous conclusion of their recursive logic. If we all played "correctly" the only logical conclusion would be to come in, have the dealer deal out all the starting hands for the evening, see who had the best and start divvying money. That is the WHOLE POINT OF POKER. Nobody plays it the same, hence, we have to play it out and see what happens. By the table coach's logic all chess games should just be awarded to white.

My all time favorite though... In your best Yakov Smirnov voice "Usually you pay coaches for lessons, but here coach pays you! What a cardroom!"

[EarlCat]

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"Could I buy a copy of your book please?"

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"If your advice is so good, shouldn't I be the one paying you?"