Poker Karma?

I don’t believe in Karma. Good things happen and bad things happen when people want to see a relationship between they do. Karma comes and goes – if Boy George has taught us anything it’s that. The problem with having bold beliefs about the universe is that they will usually come back and gently bite you on the arse.

Before I can get into my tale of Karmic woe I should make it clear that I really don’t condone abuse of your opponents – no matter how lucky the little bastards get. Table talk is definitely part of the game but when used strategically to try and make other players act the way you want them to not to abuse for the sake of it.

If you are involved in table chat you need to understand the effect it has on your opponent and it might have on you. There are very few players who can engage in ‘banter’ or something more heated and still play calm solid poker. In fact a lot of people are affected without realising it. If you do get under someone’s skin make sure you know the effect you’ve had on them. Usually they will play more hands against you and call you more so you should tighten up against them but also you should call more with moderate hands as they’ll make more moves against you. Of course if you can make a hand or two against someone while talking to them you can really get them steaming and that can be very profitable.

I probably crossed the ‘non abusive chat’ line recently…several times… during a heads up online session. To be fair, and not wanting to sound like an 8 year old, he started it. I was playing fast and basically running over him. Now when you do this to someone heads up it’s extremely frustrating for them. It also involves you playing some weak cards and on your good days hitting with them. Thanks to this I’d shown down some pretty ropey holdings and my opponent hadn’t woken up to what I was doing. As such I was called ‘a fish’, ‘a lucky fish’, ‘a lucky retard fish’ and ‘your momma’.

Usually I would have let it go – in fact the best thing you can do in this position is tell them you’re ‘really sorry’ and ‘I’ve never been on a run this lucky’ to reinforce their belief and keep them playing. But I’d had a long day working, wasn’t in a very good mood and was probably getting my period so I started talking back. The details are hazy and covered in shame but I definitely told him he ‘deserved to be sucked out on’, ‘couldn’t spell poker’ and ‘didn’t have the balls to play’ – and also ‘his momma’.

Tragically I was really enjoying myself – late night glass of something soporific in hand, hitting cards and talking both ‘trash’ and ‘smack’. Then things went horribly, badly, karmically wrong.
It started well, I raised in with a pair of 9s and saw a beautiful third nine on the flop. The flop was suited – all clubs – so I put a decent bet in which he called. The turn was the dreaded fourth club with my hand distressingly lacking one. He checked to me and I bet. He didn’t think too long before minimum reraising me. Having played with him for quite a while I knew this meant I was toast. However he’d made a mistake in giving me some very good odds for me to call and try to fill my hand and run him down.

I called. The random number generator span (I presume they spin…digitally) and out popped the case nine. I had quads…. Sweet!

He thought for a bit and then went all in. How beautiful was this? I was sitting there with quads and the man who I’d been involved in a juvenile digital chat war with had just moved in.

As the time bar ticked down I took the advantage to lay into him one more time, ‘looks like I sucked out on you one more time monkey’. Yeah I said monkey… I’m not proud. I called and waited for his disgusted reaction and a whole stack of chips to be pushed my way. The cards were turned over and the chips were pushed to him – life is good.

Wait…wait a minute; something’s horribly wrong. Let’s recap. I have quads – good that’s definitely a good hand. The cards have been turned over and the chips have been pushed to… him?! Slowly the creeping feeling that I haven’t won the hand begins to drip into terrible reality. Maybe the software has punished me for being rude, can it do that?

I check the hand history and there it is in all it’s ludicrous unpleasantness – he’d turned a straight flush; the holy of holies.

So after almost ten years of playing poker I’d had quads beaten by a straight flush for the first time. I mean you hear about these things happening but you always figure it’ll happen to someone else.
And it happened on one of the very rare occasions I’d got sucked into a slanging match with my opponent. Maybe there is such a thing as karma after all.

I stared at the screen for about three minutes, timed out and then made my best decision all night and left….quietly.

Originally published in Poker Player magazine.

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