"I HATE YOU I HOPE YOU DIE!"
February 19, 2006I played a heads-up match online just now against a player who called himself sour_grapes. “Cool screen name,” I thought. “It speaks to the anger in us all.” Well, it turned out that this guy was every bit as angry as his name, at least judging from the vituperation he spewed into the chat box, up to and including the line you see written above, “I hate you, I hope you die!”
He thought I was catching lucky, which I was. He also thought I was playing badly, which I wasn’t. After a while, he couldn’t think of anything at all, except what a lousy SOB I was, and how I deserved to be burned at the stake for making bad calls and sucking out again and again and again.
And it’s this business of not being able to think of anything that I’d like to call your attention to: When you let anger invade your play – this you know, of course – you cloud your vision. You’re no longer able to play perfect poker, or even half-decent poker, because you’re jamming your vital perception with the white noise of your own fury.
Not only that, you give your opponents a big, fat club to beat you over the head with. Once I knew how angry this guy really was, I adjusted my strategy accordingly. For instance, when flopped a set I slow played it, knowing that his anger would cause him to overbet his hand, which it did. Yes, I was lucky to flop a set, but it was his own flaw – his demonstrable anger and attendant impatience – that allowed me to maximize my gain.
Oh, and guess what? When he finally got the last of his chips in the middle, it was on an all-in raise with 9-3 offsuit. Not a bluff. Just wrath. And he called me a bad player? Fact is, he didn’t start out bad, but he sure became bad in the end, and his own relentless rage is the thing that took him down.
Look, I know what it’s like to feel fury at the poker table. I've been where sour_grapes is many times. I'll bet you have, too. We try our best to control our emotions, but we don’t always succeed. So it would be unrealistic for me to tell sour_grapes, or you or me to never feel anger; just don’t get angry. Human nature tells us that we will, at least from time to time.
One thing we can do – all of us, even sour_grapes – is mask our anger. This is pathetically easy in online poker, where you can conceal all your feelings just by saying nothing at all, by leaving the chat box alone. In live play, it’s more difficult, but not impossible: You’re seething inside at the bad beat you just took, yet you find the emotional wherewithal to smile through clenched teeth and say, “Nice hand.”
If you have trouble concealing your anger, it’s vital that you understand the reason why: psychic pain. When I put a beat on sour_grapes (not even that bad a beat, if you ask me), he experienced so much pain that it become more important to him to deal with that pain – by venting – than to continue to play his best poker. This is called feeling your game instead of thinking your game, and ladies and gentlemen, it is the kiss of death. It clouds your perceptions. It weakens your judgment. And it gives your enemies a clear and open avenue of attack. Don’t do it. Just don't. Swallow that anger. If you can’t dismiss it, dismiss yourself from the game until your tranquility returns. If you can’t do that, the least you can do is not let all that negativity leak out. Don't let so much as a hint of anger make its way into the chat box, ever. It’ll just make your opponents play more effectively against you. And it won’t even make you feel that much better in the end.
As for sour_grapes, I imagine he still hates me and hopes I'll die, but I won't give him the satisfaction. Would you?
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