To Fish, or not to Fish

Internet Poker / Editor / 21 August 2007 / Leave a Comment

That is the question... as Matt Broughton wonders if he'd rather be beaten by pros, or beaten by fish. Or if there's a third option that doesn't involve him being beaten at all.

Imagine there were only two poker rooms in the world. One was full of the best players in the world, and one was full of the worst. Which would you pick to play in? Well it's obvious isn't it... you should want to play with the worst poker players in the word. If you're better than everyone else, you'll win more money. If you can outplay your opponents - repeatedly getting all your money in with the best hand - you're going to make money in the long run. So WHY does it feel like the road to Fish Central is littered with outdraw craters?

Yes - this week's entry is a thinly-veiled bad beat! If you saw it coming as soon as the word 'fish' was mentioned, give yourself an extra point. But joking aside, I was recommended to a particular poker room with the promise of 'the worst players ever'. Like any self-respecting heartless mercenary faced with such a proposition, I couldn't help but take a look, and indeed found some of the weakest, most transparent, limited, brainless poker muppets ever to walk the virtual planet with a pair of cards in their hands.

My check-raises remained ignored/misunderstood... my continual cut-off blind stealing remained respected... even my massively over-expensive value bets with the nuts were diligently paid off. This was nirvana! Only it wasn't. Here we go...

My 9-10 connects with an 8-7-6 board. The blinds are only 500/1,000, but through a ludicrous series of re-raises and re-re-re-re-raises (that has me checking to make sure we've not suddenly entered some Limit stage I was previously unaware of) my raise to 3k turns into a re-raise to 9k, which I turn into 20k, which turns into an all-in from... 88. Yes, unperturbed by the chances of me having either end of the possible straight, I manage to get a berk to put over 26,000 into the pot. The turn is a queen, and the river... is also a queen - giving my splendid opponent a full house.

The table vomits up a batch of "NH" (which frankly makes me even more angry) apart from one "UL". You think?

The worst thing is that the people watching think that Kermit winning with a 'big hand' is a really good thing. This means that next time they are EVEN MORE likely to chase crap to the ends of the earth. Still: their money, their chips.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I did take a screenshot. Please feel free to ask if you'd like to see it. It's 'smashing'.
Bitter? Moi?