No it wasn’t a good call. It was f*cking terrible

There’s lots of things that annoy me at the poker table and most of these are down to other people, having totted up my list I think I’m going to look like a sociopath. But if other people didn’t do things to annoy me then I wouldn’t get annoyed so surely I’m not a sociopath – right?

There’s only a few things that a casino can influence though. The lack of inbuilt cup holders are one of my biggest gripes along with slow waitress service. But I get the economics of the waitress service – it costs the poker room money to provide this service so they do the bare minimum possible whilst keeping people coming to the room. Plus a lot of poker players don’t drink at the table anyway so I’m probably in the minority waiting for a waitress who only comes round every half an hour or so. Plus I have a choice – if I really dislike a room’s service I won’t go there.

But I don’t really have a choice about other people – when I sit down at a table it’s just pot luck whether the table will be full of people who should be classified as oxygen thieves. A lack of basic personal hygiene, being obnoxious and “spreading” are all worthy of being added to my list headed “people to taser when I come to power”. I had an encounter with one particularly horrid individual, who managed to combine all three, a while ago who kept telling people they need to do something – move, act, post blinds etc. It came to a head when he persistently bumped into my chair when manoeuvring his enormous frame around his seat followed by him snarling “you NEED to move to let me in” followed by me declaring “I don’t NEED to do anything, if you’d like me to do something you’d better learn some manners”. But anyway – I digress.

One of the things that doesn’t wind me up at the table are bad beats. We all get them but they are actually good for poker – I know that anyone at the table who is on the positive side of a bad beat is generally a bad player and thus is more likely to lose money. Which is good – so in a way bad beats are good. What does annoy me is what sometimes happens after a bad beat – as the pot is pushed to the luckbox someone will state “Good call” without any hint of sarcasm or irony (note this doesn’t always happen – probably only about 10% of the time). 

Now I reserve “good call” for a completely different scenario – it’s making a truly difficult decision, potentially for a lot of money. Holding pocket 10s on an ace high board and making an informed decision that the LAG repping an ace hasn’t actually got one would be that scenario, not luckboxing a 2 outer on the river having called a pot sized bet on the turn from the tightest player at the table. You know your 10s are behind here but spiking a set to beat AK will sometimes cause someone at the table to pipe up “good call”. Which makes me want to scream “No it wasn’t a good call. It was fucking terrible”. But us Brits don’t like to make a scene, so I’ll probably just tut and stare which is one of the worst insults we have, whilst silently adding another name to my list