As hollow gestures go, an angry man threatening to punch his opponent’s lights out while in an online poker room, is right up there. How I quivered in fear at home in London, as an 18-year old boy in Stockholm told me that he’d ‘hunt me down and incinerate me.’ It always impresses me when a European can speak so eloquently and offensively in a foreign language. I’m pretty sure I’ll never threaten to ‘incinerate’ anyone in any language, other than in English naturally. Of course all the gaming sites have moderators to assess that the chat content isn’t obscene or vulgar. Yet idle death threats will probably slip through uncensored so long as swear words are kept to a minimum.
I had an image of my irate Swedish foe desperately trying to decipher my identity from the only information at his disposal – namely an alias that bore no relation to my real name. ‘Right, I know he lives in London and he appears to like football. That’s enough to be getting on with for now – off to the airport! Just as soon as I’ve put on some trousers and said goodbye to mummy.’
I wondered if when he finally did track me down whether he might feel, on reflection, that he had over-reacted. Admittedly, my audacity in beating him with AQ against his mighty AK was indeed unforgivable. Yet after a plane journey for reflection he might feel that other people on his hit list had committed even more heinous poker crimes. There was that guy in Berlin who knocked him out of a tournament with Jacks when he had Queens. Not to mention the fiend in Rome who re-raised all-in with 8-2o, outrageously fluked it, and then claimed it was a mis-click.
I always tended to assume that any confrontational chat in online poker was as unproductive as it was unpleasant. If people didn’t want to listen to you they could simply turn off the dialogue and get on with their lives. Even tough talking in its less aggressive form should be quite inconsequential. A classic example of this is the player who thinks he can verbally protect his big blind. When play passes to the small blind, who is considering whether to push, the cry from the big blind will be, ‘I call’. The intention would seem to be to force a fold. If he wants to force a fold, then he surely can’t be that strong himself. Unless he realises this, and really does want some action. In other words, the comment can be interpreted to mean anything and is best to be ignored. The small blind’s decision should be based on other factors.
The verbal big blind defence may go a stage further with the utterance, ‘next time I call with any two cards.’ This comment always strikes me as pretty desperate. You might as well be saying, ‘ok guys, be careful, I’m about to go on tilt.’ It’s exactly what you want to be hearing just before you pick up a genuinely good hand. At this point a gentle bump raise will often encourage an inevitable all-in re-raise to show that he means business. In other words, hook, line and sinker.
So is tough talking on your big blind a waste of time, particularly when you’re playing online? Well, don’t get me wrong, it really should be. But my playing experience has led me to think it ultimately may have some benefit in the right circumstance. Abusive, threatening language has no merit for anyone, but the subtle suggestion that you’ll call, or that you suspect ‘stealing’ may be beneficial so long as it doesn’t sound too desperate.
I suggested earlier that the small blind could read anything into the ‘I call’ comment and should ignore it. The fact is though that many players don’t ignore these comments and that it does affect their decision-making. A weak-minded individual can be willed into folding where they might have called or pushed in a borderline scenario. I’ve seen it happen time and again. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether such mind games are in the spirit of poker. But the fact that this issue can even be discussed dispels the myth that online poker is simply a game of probability and luck, lacking any of the subtleties of the ‘live’ game. Nothing could be further from the truth.