Darkened Poker

Found this great forum post at “All Vegas Poker” that I have to share, so sad but true.

http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=7710&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=210#p122774

Player Nicknames

1.  Norman Chad-Hole: Guy who cracks the corniest, most overplayed jokes at the table. ” Hey! You know why the call A-K The Anna Kournicova? Looks pretty but never wins! Wokka Wokka Wokka!” You should be allowed to slap this guy once a session.

2.  Phil Hell-Meth-head Guy who can’t shut up at the table, cant stay still. Jumps up after every fold to steal 2 quick drags from his cigarette/crack pipe, all the while yelling ” Deal me in dealer!!” because if he misses just one hand, the bugs and worms in his head will eat his brain.

3.  Daniel Negra-Nerd Spits out statiscal analysis of every hand, and is usually wrong. “Ohh, A-K vs pocket 7′s? Your a 114% favorite cause you got like 54 outs twice.”

4.  Phil Ivey-Watching You The tool at the table who tries to stare into your soul when you make a $10 raise. I Actually had a guy last week do this to me. He took his sunglasses off and turned to stare at me over a $40 pot. He said “Why do you look nervous?” So I said ” Cause I don’t know if you’re gonna call or try to kiss me” He folded.

5.  Eli Ez-She really going out with him? The 22 year old smoking hot model seated directly behind the guy who looks like Tom Petty mated with a Mastodon.

6.  Mike Matu-Suck Dude who spews his buy in all over the table for hours then finally gets a good hand and slow plays himself into oblivion- Begins yelling “F$#K this game! I cant belive my aces lost to 5-6 off suit!” We know buddy, we can’t belive you checked behind him on a board of 3-4-8 with three hearts.

7.  Tom Dw-hat In the Hell Are You Doing? Watched way too much Dwan on High Stakes Poker. Can’t understand why when he 3 bets out of the position with J7 he loses everytime. Thats cause he can read players post flop, and you suck donky sack. DURRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

8.  Phil Laak- of Brains Folds kings face up because he gets re raised. Folds his big blind in a tournement and leaves himself with only 1 BB left cause he “Had Crap” Open bets pocket aces for $200 cause he “Always Loses With them”. Makes you just want to go buy him a tin foil hat.

9.  Sammy Far-Crying Out Loud Guy who builds his $100 buy in to $2100 in an hour buy continually sucking out after calling large pre flop bets with crap. Only good news is he wil spew it all back before the night is over.

10.  David Bennyme-Another Drink This guy is blotto, but keeps drinking and babbling while playing. Usualy gives up too much information- Like he has a King, He only raises when he got top pair, He wears his wifes underwear, etc. TMI for sure.

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Darkened Poker

This book blew my mind.  Reading it will not make you a better poker player or anything but it is a riveting look at the dark side of Vegas and high stakes poker.  Its got sex, drugs, dirty cops, staking players, porn stars, strippers, depression, jail, sports betting and finally a lot of good poker stories.  Unlike Phil Hellmouth’s book it is a very humble look at his own life and mistakes that is not so smothered in self praise that you can actually learn from it.  I found it amazing just how many times this guy has won enough money to be set for life yet could not stop himself from throwing it all away.

I think that is the greatest lesson from this book is to have a plan for what you going to do if you ever hit the big time.  Without it people will find a way to help you spend your money quick like and you will be broke once again.  It blew me away that he at one point had an 8500 a month drug and party habit which is bad enough but it caused him to blow off his entire 2 million bankroll in the cash games.  It will be interesting to see if he can recover from all the drug abuse and get it back together to be one of the great players like Doyle Brunson that plays at the highest level their entire life.

Highly recommended…

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Tournament poker has introduced a new situation to live poker.  You have to sit there and take whatever the other players are dishing out in terms of verbal abuse.  In a cash game you can always go somewhere else, table change or go home for the night.  But in a tournament you forfeit everything if you leave and you have no idea how long it is going to be till they break your table.  You are stuck and you have to be able to clamp down and weather the storm.  Some players out there know this very well and take a lot of advantage of it.

Tony G ( Antanas Guoga ), Mike Matasow ( The Mouth ), and Phil Hellmouth (The Brat) are some of the most well know talkers that try to get under peoples skin and either manipulate them or tilt them off their game.  I am always blown away by the effectiveness of Tony G, he can take the best pro’s and make them play like little children.

Tony G takes out Russia player Ralph Perry

Now this is an pretty extreme version verbal abuse to put someone on max tilt.  For example when I played with the TiltBoys they are still going for tilt, but they are willing to wait all night to get it and therefor they start off much slower so no one ends up hating anyone else at the end of the night.  My favorite forms of TiltBoy tilt are asking Phil Gordon why he is not wearing his WSOP braclet ( he does not have one yet ) and how his company Expert Insight is doing ( it went under ).  For extra fun you can also ask him what Eric Lingren called him on national TV ( an idiot ).

Now the question is given that is it clear that tilt can be profitable, what is it worth and are all the downsides worth it?

I am pretty sure Ralph Perry will never talk to Tony G again and that is a serious problem.  Just like in the work world everyone you seriously piss off is another bridge burnt.

• More high stakes cash games Tony G will not be invited to
• Less people he can talk strategy with
• Less people that will be recommending him for poker site, sponsorship, advertising deals
• More people he can not play poker with as he will never know their motives.  Everyone will be trapping him to bust him out for the rest of his life.  That makes it hard to play good poker.

Now in our little worlds it is a little different we will not have to worry about sponsorship deals but the other three apply.  Plus we cash game players have to worry about pissing fish off and them not coming back to the game; one of the biggest hurt to your bankroll is money you can no longer win.

Think it is fine to go for a little tilt and get a good player to play a little worse:

• suck out one someone
• show a bluff if you want
• laugh with them for missing a bet along the way once in awhile
• laugh with them for making a bad call once in awhile

Just avoid the going for extreme tile and do not waste it on already bad players:

• verbally abuse someone
• laugh at them when they get sucked out on
• slow roll them
• show them every bluff all night long
• berate their play all night long

The short term gain is not worth it, you chase the long term + EV fish away and are only left playing with the better players that can ignore you and still think your worth their time to play against.  Instead of focusing on tilting people, focus on building a better game.