First watch the first 1/2 of the video to be amazed at what looked like poker amateur hour except it was online pro “Pokernoob” and live pro “Roland de Wolfe” in a large buy-in tournament over in Europe.
The good:
What a call by Pokernoob, he put Roland on a busted flush draw and made a risky but normally +EV call which in this case turned out to be wrong.
The Bad:
Roland de Wolfe does not turn over his hand when called, he tries some amateur move of just turning over one card to see if he is beat. As I have discussed here before this form of angling at the showdown has to stop.
Roland then further compounds his mistake by actively trying to avoid showing his full hand and pushing his cards into the muck.
The dealer tries to stop Roland from mucking his hand, they should only do that if someone in the hand explicitly asks to see both show down hands.
Pokernoob then turns up his hand to rub it in Roland’s face that he just folded the best hand. Why is he trying to stop Roland from making great big mistakes like mucking the best hand. Why not just take the pot and see if Roland will do it several more times in the tournament so he can make more money.
Roland then try’s to get his hand back so he can win the hand by saying he showed a higher card. Wow what a weasel move that was, he was happy to muck his hand to avoid giving away info earlier when he thought he was beat. But as soon as realized he made a mistake he wants to get his hand back so he can win the pot. Seriously WTF, pro’s should know better than that.
The Ugly:
Sure Pokernoob just proved that he can angle better than Roland at that moment in time, but he has now taught Roland to be a slightly better player. Why do these kids always have to trade educating their poker competition of all their mistakes for a mere 2 seconds of “in your face” glory. Not a long term +EV play.
PokerNews has a slightly different take on the hand which I fully disagree with. I think Matt Savage saying that he would have pulled Rolands hand from the muck and awarded the pot to Roland would be a terrible mistake. Just because he thinks Pokernoob did not play in a “Gentleman” manner does not mean you can go and change the rules of the game on the fly.
I have noticed a new trend in angling that is getting very annoying. If player A bets on the river and gets called by Player B then player A is suppose to automatically turn over his cards and if player B can beat it he turns up his. If Player B can not beat it he can just muck his hand and the game can move on quickly.
But for some reason everyone has forgotten the show part of showdown and no one wants to turn over their cards. Instead what happens these days is Player A start questioning what player B has and try’s to determine if he has won the pot and needs to turn over his cards.
This has to stop for many reasons:
This questioning period is slow and wastes a huge amount of time which slows the game down which in turn pisses everyone off at the table.
If the angler does get a fish to turn over his hand and then he can beat it and turns over his better hand it is exactly like slow rolling which really pisses the fish off and drives them away. Not good for the game…
It is breaking the rules and any time you allow even small breaks in the rules it just encourages people to go for bigger violations. I have seen people start with this angle and then move onto announcing bigger hand than they have to see if people will throw away their hands away before they are forced to turn it over.
I can see why really aggressive players are trying to do this, they want to minimize how many hand they are turning over since they are playing so many it makes it a lot easier for people to get a read on how they play.
The dealer should handle this situation and force the Player A to turn over his hand immediately or muck it. But sometimes you get a weak dealer that does not control the table like they should have you have to deal with it yourself.
Dealing with the showdown angler:
The right thing to do is silently just wait till Player A either turns over or mucks his hand. You only have to do this once or twice and they will often give up and start turning over their hand right away. The important part is to not say anything because as soon as you talk to them in any way they believe they have a chance and keep trying.
If that does not resolve it and the dealer does not take the hint to keep the action going then just call the floor man over and he will explain it to the dealer as it is costing the house in reduced rake.
Main point is this is a very bad trend for poker and everyone at the table should be making sure it does not happen. If it goes on for to long the game will get out of control and encourage the angler to try it on the fish which will kill the game.
