Talking trash doesn’t help you

I’m at Ohio State now and we are playing a lot more live poker. Yesterday we decided to get a game together and found two guys ready to play right when we wanted to start. As soon as they heard about poker they started playing the “I don’t know how to play” deal, nice try guys.

“Do you play that ‘texas’ thing?”

“We can’t play for much money…”

So we tell them we’re playing for $5 and they look disappointed, clearly thinking they had a chance to win more money off of us. They decided to play anyway and they didn’t stop talking the whole game.

Normally a $5 game isn’t that important to me and I just try to have fun and play random hands, same with my roommates. These 2 guys probably would have had a better chance of winning if we were all just playing for fun and enjoying ourselves.

“We” is myself and my 3 roommates: Adam, Max, and Steve. We are all good poker players, not high limit players but we do play big tournaments and do well in them consistently.

I’ll call the “two guys” Fish #1 and Fish #2, I forget their real names and probably won’t see them again.

As soon as we sat down ready to play these guys started using the proper terminology for hands, they were talking about gut shot straight draws, runner-runner flush draws, giving out drawing odds that were in the right vicinity, talking about pot odds, and the list goes on. Clearly they had played before and were trying to “hustle” us. We all noticed this right away and it forced us to play well and try to win, not just have fun. We wanted these kids to lose, actually, we wanted to kick their asses.

Rather than talk back and make ourselves look like assholes we simply sat down and started playing, none of us said anything and we didn’t play with our chips and or talk about drawing odds or pot odds, we played loose aggressive and establishe a table image of loose-passive by showing bluffs and mucking our good hands.

At one point I had to defend myself when one of the kids told me I overbet the pot. I bet 800 into a pot of 1200 with 10♥10&spades and he said “Man, nice overbet…” I smiled and mentioned that I had merely bet two-thirds of the pot and that it wasn’t anywhere near an overbet. Nice try though.

Later one of the “fish” got involved in a big pot with Steve and Adam. Steve raised UTG with J♥7♦ hoping to steal, but he got called my Fish #1 and Adam. The flop came K♦ 7&spades 7♥. Steve bet out from early position and Fish #1 said, “I know I have you beat, but I don’t know if I have [Adam] beat…” So he mucked. Adam called Steve’s all in and everyone got to see Steve win with three of a kind, much to Fish #1’s dismay.

The guys talking trash placed 5th and 6th in a 6 person tournament - pretty impressive for two people talking so much shit.

We ended up taking our money back and putting the money into a “room fund” for whatever we need to buy down the road, whether it’s beer or food.

What’s the point of this story? It’s not that my roommates and I kicked these kids asses, although that that was fun. It’s that talking trash doesn’t get you anywhere. All it does is make your opponents want to play better and beat you. If you talk trash to good players, you’ll probably lose because good players who play better usually play great. Bad players who play better usually play good. Save your money and just play good poker without talking about how great you play, no one cares and really, it’s rather annoying.

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