About chat...

[MicroBob]

i was going to make a reply in the other thread (regarding Lancasterus) because a semi-interesting discussion about 'chat on or off' had developed. But the thread was locked so I'm doing this instead.

If this is off-topic then we can go ahead and lock this too I guess...but I think it's a worthwhile topic.


If leaving chat on causes you to get into arguments with the table-idiot or go on tilt then you are right that turning it off would be your best course.
The way that PBob is responding I almost wonder if the chat he was witnessing was distracting him too much. Probably not, but it's possible.

however, if the chat doesn't bother you I think it is +EV to have it on.

1. If you're multi-tabling then you might not see as many of the hands and show-downs on the tables where you fold pre-flop.
If I see something in chat that says "OMG YOU FISH!!" or something like that then I pull up the HH to get a look at exactly how badly the fish played.
If it's his 5th suck-out in a row and somebody else is rambling on about it then this letting you know that this fishy guy thinks he's 'running hot' and can run people over. Adjust your play against this guy accordingly.


2. The guy who is doing the berating is typically going to be a sucky player himself. However, I've been on table with generally decent 26/20 type players who lose a couple of tough hands and start going on about how they can't catch a damn thing.
I beat a 26/20 guy with quads over his nut full-house (so he claimed, it wasn't on party so i couldn't check) and he was really whining about it. Did somebody say "Tilt"? He was getting really hyper-agg in blind-steals, moreso then I would have expected. Calling him down with almost anything can be +EV if you read him correctly (he showed-down unimproved 86o on a future hand that I likely wouldn't have called-down if I didn't think of the percentag chance that he was just plain tilting).

3. I'll chat occasionally to try to keep the table friendly. If I get quads and somebody tells me "NH" or "WOW!!!" I'll try to get back with a polite 'ty' or something.

4, If someone is criticizing my play I want to know about it. I want to see if someone is calling me a 'raise-a-holic' or if they are just complaining about the general amount of raising going on at the table. It's one thing for their stats to show that they are 35/2/0.4. It's another thing for them to be telling you that everyone is raising too much and that everyone should just play 'real poker' and 'how can everyone raise with all that junk?'
He's basically telling you that he's more and more willing to call you down with really marginal crap now (low AF means he's not going to raise a whole lot...but he can still be a calling station).


I believe one can gain a lot of info from one's opponents via the chat.
If you don't get tilted off by it then it can definitely be +EV to leave it on.

[jba]

I agree with a lot of this, especially

"3. I'll chat occasionally to try to keep the table friendly. If I get quads and somebody tells me "NH" or "WOW!!!" I'll try to get back with a polite 'ty' or something."

I like throwing in a nh when a fish catches quads too. help them have fun...

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with a lot of this, especially

"3. I'll chat occasionally to try to keep the table friendly. If I get quads and somebody tells me "NH" or "WOW!!!" I'll try to get back with a polite 'ty' or something."

I like throwing in a nh when a fish catches quads too. help them have fun...

[/ QUOTE ]
I almost always says nh when a fish sucks out a solid player.

[MicroBob]

that could almost be taken as sarcasm though couldn't it?

the only time i get sarcastic is when someone is calling me a retard and I respond 'ty' or something else kind of light and silly but not terribly clever.

[Spicymoose]

I agree that you can definetly learn a lot from chat. Although it might not be too recommended, sometimes I have screwed with table coaches who think I am doing something wrong. I remember one time I made a seemingly strange play (it was correct however) on a blind steal or something, and some table coach berated me for it. I just played dumb and said "but I had an ace", or something like that. As the game progressed, I had been getting a few decent hands, and playing pretty agressively. The table coach continued to berate me, and I just acted like any fish should. I threw in a few jabs at him, and by the end of the session, he was tilting so bad that he was really going nutso. When he left the game, everyone at the table complained that the table-coach turned maniac was gone.

I generally try not to chat, but if I feel like I can mess with a table coach, I sometimes take the challenge.

[milesdyson]

smdalmbb ladies

i [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] chat.

i berate table coaches and throw random "rofl"s out there when a "tag" plays a hand like an idiot (i would rofl at myself sometimes if i were a different player at the table). i also like "wowowowowo" for the same purpose.

[MicroBob]

yeah. this can be +EV when done properly.


Lots of people excuse their 'I was trying to put him on tilt' type chat though when, in fact, they are just getting sucked into a giant war at the table.

DCWGaming might have been guilty of this kind of logic perhaps (if you followed that thread from a few mths back).


It's a very delicate balance though between '+EV tilt-inducing chat' and 'he sucked me in and probably tilted me a little bit also.'

[TheKentock]

Whenever a table coach attacks me, I always respond "gotta play to win man"

If that doesn't get them tilting, nothing will.

I turned off someone's chat for the first time last night. He started after this known fish (on my buddy list) sucked out on him - talking about how he was gonna bust fishy man, blah blah.

So I told him to stop whining. Well, that pretty much put him on tilt, as he started in on "blah blah I'll watch you bust out too, I've made more money playing poker than you ever will" (this is 2/4 6-max). Then I hit mute (after I told him I was going to) and the raises started coming fast and furious (did I mention he was immediately on my right? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

I hit a downswing, followed by an upswing, and as he was about to bust out I saw everyone else at the table talking about how he's busting out before me, lol rofl...guess he'd kept up the chatter the whole time. He busted and never even said goodbye. He he.

[Monty Cantsin]

You are totallly correct MB. Chat can be full of play style indicators. One of the most typical is the moralist.

The moralist sees poker as a strange little exercise in ethics: you master your desire to gamble by only playing reasonable hands in reasonable situations, you don't raise unless you have a strong hand, you don't stick around for outrageous longshots, everyone waits their turn for good starting cards and/or good flops and then wins their allotted amount and everyone's happy.

The people who complain about other players breaking these rules (I can't believe you called with that! I can't believe you raised with that!) tend to be very predictable in their own play. When I see someone like this I don't need to see many hands to know what to expect from them.

The game's psychological component is already whittled down to an extremely narrow channel in online Poker. From an EV perspective, I can't imagine anyone voluntarily shutting off additional information.

But for me, chat is also a small reminder that this a game.

I know my attitude about this is different from a lot of you guys, but at the end of the day this is an important part of the experience for me. Yeah, I know most chat is just whining, or insults, or banal chit chat. But the point is that you are engaged in a stylized social interaction with other human beings. The emotional and psychological content of that interaction is an essential part of the package for me. And it's complex - it can involve intense aggression and struggle for domination and anger and animus and revenge. It can also involve admiration and respect and goodwill.

So, even though this social aspect of the game is almost completely absent from online play, chat serves as a small reminder of it.

Actually, now that I think of it, I belive staying in touch with this aspect of the game is long term +EV. We tend to de-humanize our opponents a lot around here. To patronize them and think of them as anonymous target dummies, or a great sea of unwashed, uncultured cannon fodder, unworthy of our respect.

But great poker thinking, at any level, requires the deepest empathy with your opponent.

And killer poker can only be achieved by someone doing battle with foes, not exterminating insects.

And thinking about your opponents as faceless, error-ridden algorithms to be exploited by the most efficient possible mechanical process is the first step to becoming a robot yourself.

I guess I'm a bit of moralist myself, and also quite the chatterer. Sorry!

/mc