/ Matt Broughton / 11 January 2008 / Leave a comment

If you've got nothing clever to say, say nothing. And here - to prove the point - is Matt Broughton...

If you're someone who's been drawn to poker thanks to televised coverage, you'll no doubt believe that trash talk and bullying at the table is normal, acceptable behaviour. Personally I'd like to bang Tony G and Phil Hellmuth's fat heads together six or seven times as way of thanks for creating a generation of monstrous, gobby poker players who are generally more concerned about the brilliance of their next comeback than they are the quality of their starting hand selection.

And as if being branded with 'hilarious' names down the Gutshot (my personal favourite is "Donk" - oh yes, I'm not tired of that word yet) isn't enough, when you come to fire up your friendly online poker site there's a nice big juicy chat box ready for some dolt to misspell all his clever put-downs within. Horray.

Now there is a point to this rambling (I feel it important to mention that as it's not always the case) and the point is this: if you do decide to be one of the idiots who uses nearly all of his time bank up because he's busy typing some weak insult - jabbing inaccurately at the keyboard with one finger like some Neanderthal - then watch out that what you say doesn't have us all go from thinking you're a fool, to KNOWING you're a fool.

I played in an MTT the other day, and is often the case when you tend to go as deep as I always do (and please don't check this 'fact' via sharkscope; you'll only ruin my story) there are periods when it seems the tables are breaking almost every other hand, so the ability to quickly profile players becomes paramount to success.

After one such random table move I found myself trying to classify one particularly active player (who I'd only got as far as noting was "particularly active" - so not a lot to go on really). On one particular hand I had position on this chap and decided to play a speculative hand, see if I could get lucky and hit the flop large-style and take some chips off this chimp (see: I can be just as devastating as the next man when it comes to name-calling).

My new friend put in a 4xBB raise, and I called with 6d7d. I'm not going to go into full hand history mode, but trust me when I say that as the hand played out I feel confident he was sitting on a pocket pair around 10s or Js. The bad news for him was that I had a massive drawing hand. From the flop I had middle pair with the 7, a backdoor flush draw with the diamonds, and an up and down straight draw. I was pretty sure that any of these hands - should they complete - would receive nothing less than a full pay off from monkey boy, grasping on to his pocket pair like a golden banana.

Cheetah bet out (if you don't get this Tarzan-based gag don't worry - it just means you aren't old and crusty like me) which was the right thing to do from his point of view. However, he wasn't betting enough to stop me from chasing the various cards that I perceived could be hit to create a winning - nay super-profitable - hand against this clown. (See how I effortlessly moved from animal-based insults to the world of circus? This trash talking is easy).

He kept betting... accidentally kept pricing me in... and I - of course - kept calling. I'm pretty sure he would have paid me off had I tripped up or made the flush, but it was actually the straight that dropped into my lap. Dicky Dicknose (now I've just moved on to 'silly name' insults) obviously bet at the river (having kindly plumped the pot enough to ensure he had to make a nice big juicy final bet to keep his story 'real') and I pushed back at him for all my chips. He duly paid me off, mucking his hand and spitting all sorts of cracking poker blart down the chat box at me.

The key thing was that the essence of his rant was about how awful my calls were; how fishy I was, and how I should have let the hand go. Now, remembering that he actually got to see my hand, the fact that he said all of these things immediately told everyone at the table that this guy had no real feel for pot odds. Yes, he got past the early stages of the MTT, but the fact that he couldn't see that he priced me into each and every call I made until my ultimate victory (like I'm going to chose to write about a hand where I lose!) immediately sent waves of pleasure down the spine of anyone paying attention. For the rest of that table's existence everyone over-bet the pot knowing that Dicky McClown-Chimp (I'm not really trying now am I) would pay over the odds for weak draws, pay off value bets that were slightly too big, and generally misplay his hand relevant to the size of the pot.

As the table slowly took it in turns to bleed him dry his chat box abuse subsided, and as he finally exited to a flurry of sarcastic "gg muppet" messages, I couldn't help but think that if he'd only kept his trap shut in the first place he might still be around.

Any way, lesson to be learnt. Not that I'll be shutting up any time soon. Obviously.