Drama with a smart/dirty player
At the casino this past weekend, this guy named Lucas randomly told me, “I keep my nails really short because when they’re longer I get tempted to mark cards.” I’ve learned from teaching kids that guilty people usually admit to things that are a little less worse than what they actually did. If a little girl told me that she took three pieces of candy that were off limits, she probably took five. Since this guy was looking for an opportunity to tell a perfect stranger that that he had such a strong desire to mark cards that he had to take physical action to stop himself, I knew he wasn’t afraid to play dirty. Then, a little later, he proudly told the table that he had once won an $800 pot by saying he had two pair at showdown when he didn’t. Saying this made the other guy prematurely muck his hand, and thus forfeit the pot.
Lucas also rarely folded a hand without making it seem like the biggest lay down of his life. I know people do this to discourage others from bluffing, and even though it’s annoying and slows the game down, I think it’s an effective tactic. In one of his dramatic performances, Lucas hummed and hawed about making a flop call against me and even showed me one of cards to try get a reaction. After seeing one card, I knew I could beat any of the possible hands he held. Since this was a large pot, and most of my stack was in the middle already, I shoved on the turn.
He clearly didn’t like my shove. I realized that he wasn’t going to call, and that his performance had made me act predictably, which kept me from getting the most value out of my hand. I was outplayed here, and I gave him a lot of credit for a good move.
But then Lucas got shady. He made a dramatic flick of his wrist like he was going to fold, but he didn’t release his cards! I, like the dummy in his story, instinctually started to toss my hand in too, but I stopped myself at the last second when I saw that he still had his cards (thank god for youthful reflexes). “You’re folding, right?” I said. Then he went back into his performance of deciding whether or not to call. I just sighed, and waited.
Finally, he said, “I’m going to fold, you can muck.” But I still waited for him to fold his hand. He took an awkward amount of time, and I said, “Whatever, he said he was folding,” and I put a tip on top of my cards to protect them, and slid them forward, still far from the muck. Then he said, “Those are mucked right?” Meaning that he thought it was his pot, and I repeated, “It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t. You said, ‘I fold.’” He frustratingly tossed his cards in the pile, and told me, “You shouldn’t push your cards in first,” and then he claimed that he didn’t say that he folded. He wasn’t contesting the pot, so clearly he wasn’t too convinced that he didn’t say “fold,” but things still escalated a bit (which may have been just what he wanted), and I told him that I thought he was shady and acting inappropriately. He responded by actually telling me, “I’m the dirtiest player in this room. No question about it. I’m not interested in anything but taking your money and paying my bills with it, and I’ll do what I have to do to get it.”
I don’t mind or judge him for looking for angles. I was even defending some (but not all) of his actions to other players. He clearly is a fighter and I admire that, but I want to win fairly, and I assume other people do as well, which I suppose makes me an easy target for someone like him. So, just as he views shooting angles as a financially smart decision, I view not playing with players like him as a smart financial decision, which is why I decided to move tables. He asked me why I was leaving, and I smirked and just said, “You.” This got him upset again, and he maintained that didn’t do anything wrong. I told him, “Look, you yourself claimed to be a dirty player, and bottom line, you are not a player I want to play with. I should have left a long time ago. I can find much easier money at another table and not have to worry so much about sketchy stuff happening.”
I’m realistic about situations like these. I know people do questionable things in poker, and I can live with that, but if this guy is going to brag about being a dirty player, he shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t want to play with him. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
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That’s really gross. Good for you for leaving and telling him what you thought of him and his play.