You Suck at Poker

One thing that was really interesting to me while listening to the other bloggers in chat the other night was hearing TraumaPoker repeatedly say "I suck" and "I'm the worst player at this table." It was a weird contradiction to how he used to act in his blog. Lately he seems to have reversed his opinion. Indicentally, I'm really glad he ditched that retarded "100-2-Infiniti" name, or whatever it was. Was he supposed to start playing poker with $100, and eventually buy an Infiniti with the money? Anyway, I digress. Trauma ended up being a pretty hilarious guy. Join the chat sometime and you'll see. The trash talk between he and SirWaffles is absolutely precious.

Then I started thinking about the phrase "You suck at poker." (With a nudge from Double As.) It really doesn't mean anything. The person who says it really can't know your game that well, unless he's been watching you for a long time. And reading your mind.

If someone tells you "You suck at poker" you can basically do one of three things.

1) Consider the source. If the person has no clue about poker, then his comment might not mean anything. You could do copious amounts of research, investigating their history and watching hands they play for the next few months. Unfortunatley it's usually just a person who is trying to get under your skin, and raise your insecurity about your game. If need you defend yourself, perhaps by saying "There's no way on earth I could possibly suck, because I win money playing," then you obviously have been affected by the criticism.

2) Actually, deep down agree with the source. You can choose to get angry about it or choose to accept it, but if you do indeed feel that you suck at poker, you may think the source is correct. I'm not sure why someone would do this and keep playing, but I know they're out there.

3) The only actually reasonable choice: Ignore the source. They don't know the first thing about your poker game. Maybe they saw you overplay some shitty hand, so they think you suck. They don't know the situation. Maybe you were just fucking around, playing way below your normal limits and trying to tilt some folks. Maybe you decided randomly to make a play and ran into a big hand or a calling station. Maybe you just fucking like playing 73off because your birthday is July 3rd. Who the fuck knows?

So maybe it is just a good strategy? If you want to know if someone sucks, just pre-emptively accuse them of being a player who is "teh suck." If they defend themselves, then obviously they don't have any real confidence in their game. If they laugh and say "indeed," you know you're dealing with a player who knows not only about poker, but about how to play the game.