Keeping My Trap Shut

Professional card player Howard Lederer recent wrote a really great article here. In it, he discusses the disadvantages of wearing sunglasses and earphones during tournaments. I wholeheartedly agree that headgear which in any way obscures your ability to discern fine visual or auditory detail translates into a big advantage for your opponents. So many poker players say so much more than they should at the poker table. If I have headphones on, I can't hear it!

I do not spend a huge amount of time playing cards online, but I play in occasional online tournaments just for fun. I prefer the little $10 sit-and-gos, and once in a blue moon, I will register for a small buy-in multi-table tournament.

In a recent $10 sit-and-go, I had the pleasure a playing with someone who simply could not stay away from the table's chat box. He continuously berated the play of other people at the table, bragged about how he wins the cash games at the Borgata four times each week (misspelling 'Borgata' in the process), and throwing around chips like peanuts. Judging from the words that this person was using, the tone of his comments, the fashion in which he clearly embellished the truth at every opportunity, and his general demeanor, I quickly created an image of this person in my head. He seemed to me like someone who probably has very few friends, and highly insecure about everything, including his poker game. To make a long story short, I stuck him for a huge pot, and he never recovered. The sad part is that he told everyone his entire life story without even realizing it. If had asked the poker gods to deliver a person to me who could effectively demonstrate the validity of the axiom that 'Silence is Golden' when it comes to poker, this guy fit the bill perfectly.

I finished the tounament in second place, and then I quickly proceeded today to forget everything I learned! On a whim (and since I had the day off from work) I decided to enter a $30 multi-table tournament on Bodog. I was seated immediately with arguably the best no-limit held 'em tournament player on Bodog, known as 'head2782'** (he says he had an unusually big head as a child). We were seated together for the entire tournament, and believe it or not, I think I got the best of him in the pots we both participated in (he finished 9th, and I finished 7th for around $350). One hand in particular between us, I hit a rare 4-of-kind, and took a large number of chips from him. He complained about his bad luck, and I replied that '..the last thing I wanted to do was upset Mr. Bodog'. Even though this is all I said, I think it was a huge mistake to say it. I said it in respect of his game and reputation (which I would see as a weakness if I were him), but my saving grace was that my comment could have be construed as being sarcastic.

Anyway... the moral of these stories is that even the most benign comments can unintentionally reveal a great deal of information. I need to remember to stay away from the chat boxes online and the headphones at the table!

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**I registered for a really cool free tool at Bluff Magazine's website this week. It is called 'thepokerdb' and it allows you to view online multi-table tournament results for most of the big online poker sites, including a 'search by screen name' function. Search 'maddgravy' at Bodog, and you can see the history of my two outstanding and gigantic cashes, including today's. Check out the history of head2782 also. Wow. Where does he find the time?!