Videos
Shut Up and Play, Donkey
I was sitting around trying to figure out what to write about this week when, without warning, I began receiving a barrage of insults in the chat window of my table on Cake Poker. My opponent went as far as to put a space in the middle of his swear word, so it wouldn’t get picked up by the chat filter (clever, huh?) and proceeded to call me the standard string of names that get thrown out by overzealous college kids that lose a hand in a game they can’t afford to be playing in the first place. Now, this stuff is nothing new. I started playing online poker in 2003, and it was never easy to avoid being called names. That said, what a difference it is to sit at the average poker table these days versus a few years ago! The atmosphere at the table has changed; it’s gotten flat out nasty. The poker table has always been a competitive environment, but things have progressed to a new level. You now have people actually looking up the statistics of their opponents on websites such as www.thepokerdb.com and www.officialpokerrankings.com so that they can point out to everyone at ...
Crow March 15th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
You are right, it’s non stop swearing and cursing online now. I put it down to the online sites being weighty on the ‘action’ side of flops and hands. I think this all goes back to the ‘Is poker rigged’ question.
The fact that online poker is very suspicious and now there is actually proof that some sites were rigging play (absolute poker).. I think this creates a bad atmosphere among players who just want to see normal flops and play normal poker. Given the chatting option just gives people the option to swear.. and lets face it, if you can swear you will.
All players try to detach from emotion, well I do, especially when playing for money. But if you look at the moment on google, there is an article about Phil Helmuth losing the plot online and ranting on for ages about how it’s unbelievable.. He doesn’t say ‘it’s rigged’ because it was his own site he was playing on! But how can poker stay friendly when someone who should be leading by example is swearing and losing the plot!
The bottom line is that Poker is gambling and where gambling exists – degenerates exist. Sad but true.