Why People Hate Live Poker

I've survived Day 3 of the WSOP main event with 108,400 chips. I reached precisely zero showdowns, so you could say that my cards didn't matter at all. I ran sort of well. In eight hours of poker, I had aces, kings and queens at least twice each. I flopped kings full, an ace high flush, and a set of deuces. Unfortunately, I got no action on any of those hands. But I didn't get called the times I was squeezing with air, either.

Several times I saw my opponents reach for their chips as they contemplated playing back at my 3-bets, but each time they folded. I'm beginning to think I have an intimidating table image, even without a huge stack. My confidence has increased each day. I think a year from now I could be pretty good at this live tournament business. Maybe I'll play all of the $10k events next year - Limit Holdem, No Limit, Pot Limit Omaha, Deuce to Seven, HORSE, etc. We'll see.

Anyway, today started off in unpleasant fashion. The first guy to my left was a real nice guy with a real short stack. He played tight until he accidentally got it in with KQ after losing track of the action. Bummer. He was replaced by my least pleasant opponent of the tournament. Double bummer.

Despite the fact that we're all fighting for a piece of a rather large pie of money ($68 million), everyone else has been polite, sportsmanlike, and of generally good cheer. Not this guy. From the moment he sat down to the moment he left the table, I could tell he was "one of those guys."

Our table was full and I was correctly positioned at the table, but he asked me to move over to give him some space. He was in the 9-seat next to the dealer, which is an uncomfortable spot. I was in the 8-seat on his right. He had a bag of foul smelling food, so I tried to oblige, but there really wasn't that much room.

With antes of two black chips (200), he kept asking me for change, despite the fact that he had two stacks of them. This is inconsiderate and slows the game down. The chips, the smell, and the cantankerousness were on the slightly irritating side, but it comes with the territory. I just tried to ignore him and engage some of the other players in more pleasant conversation. Then it happened.

I folded my hand under the gun, and our friend folded his hand next. Two players later, a colorblind offensive lineman tried to open limp the cutoff. We want to encourage this behavior. The blinds were 600 and 1200, and he put a 1000 and two 500 chips in the pot. "Oops," he said as he reached for one of the 500 chips. The dealer pushed it back to him, making this a call.

The button folded, then the small blind asked, "Is that a call?" That's when our buddy to my left chimed in.

"It's a raise! It's more than half the bet. It has to be a raise!"

First of all, it's none of this guy's business whether the cutoff limps or raises. He's already folded. Second of all, it was clearly a mistake. The button didn't care. The small blind didn't care. The big blind didn't care. They're the only guys who should get an opinion. But this guy had the dealer call the floor, who declared the play a min-raise.

As we returned from the second break (but before he returned), I asked "Would somebody bust this guy?" This is pretty out of character for me, but I don't have a lot of tolerance for a single person ruining the vibe of a whole table. He busted soon after and was replaced by a pleasant Aussie (who unfortunately played better than the curmudgeon).

There were two other incidents that I was going to mention, but I'm pretty tired, so I'll save them for another time, but they involve a couple of live poker faux pas. One is an "I want to see that hand" abuse, and the other is a "You're good" at showdown miscall.

Enough of that. I'm excited to make it to Day 4. I certainly didn't expect to get this deep. In fact, I'm supposed to be on a plane at 2 PM, so I have to go rebook that now. Best of luck to Jeremy and David. I met both of them at the DragTheBar gathering, and I hope to meet them again down the line in this tournament. Not too soon, though, as they're both tourney pros and I'm just a humble Limit Holdem coach.