Keeping Quiet (And Still)

I might have cycled through more pet peeves at the poker table than is healthy for me, but almost all of them have a reason behind them. I don’t like it when people waste time on meaningless decisions like how many times to run out the board. That extra 30 seconds per all in added up over the course of the night could result in an extra ten hands. I don’t like it when players (or dealers) talk about how someone played a hand after they’re away from the table, especially if they played it badly. This causes a caustic environment where players are afraid to make mistakes for fear of being ridiculed behind their back. I don’t like it when players take forever in tournaments because they’re worried about their image or not giving out timing tells. It’s almost never a recreational player and, as a result, those recreational players tend to have less fun. In addition, as I recently heard Terrence Chan say in an interview, it’s in the professional players’ best interest to play faster because there will be more hands dealt at the table.

One that I’ve been seeing quite often lately and that has been bugging me lately is a two-parter. I have been seeing dealers doing something when they should be doing nothing and I’ve been hearing players saying something when they should be saying nothing. Mostly, the players I refer to are ones who play for a living, but sometimes it extends to recreational players as well.

Let me explain what I’m talking about and I’ll start with the players. I was playing in a pot-limit Omaha game. On the turn, the board is 9-8-7-J with two clubs. Player A, who is first to act, bets and three players call. The river is a small, non-pairing club and it checks around. Player A says, “I guess I can’t win” and doesn’t show his cards. Player B, next to show, shows a 10-7xx for the second nut straight, Player C shows 10-9-9x for the second nut straight, and Player D mucks. Now, Player A shows his Q-10 and scoops the pot, much to the chagrin of players B and C. This one wasn’t that big of a deal, but it’s the type of situation that I’m talking about. If, instead of saying something, he had just shown his cards, he could have made the situation much smoother and, since this person plays for a living, smooth sailing is what he should be aiming for. Some other examples I hear quite often are things like, “Would you have called $450?” after getting a call for $350, justifications of why you played the hand the way you did, and the ever-popular complaining about always missing your draws while you’re dragging the pot. I dislike all of these things because they are all examples of things that might make for a less enjoyable atmosphere. Asking someone if they would call more or telling them how good you are or being disappointed that your flush draw didn’t come in even though your pair draw did or your ace-high was good enough to win the pot are all, at the least annoying, and at the worst, combative. If you’re a player who relies on poker for their income, annoying or putting your opponents at odds with you can be good in the short term, but bad in the long term.

Dealers have a whole other problem in this regard. I know it can be boring and tedious to be a dealer, I used to be one. For some reason though, many dealers have trouble with doing nothing. There is a bet and a raise, the player who bet is thinking, and the dealer scoops in the bet unsolicited, leaving the amount of the raise. The dealer counts out a bet made by a player, again unsolicited. The dealer fiddles with the muck or stacks the chips while someone is contemplating river action. All of these things are doing something just for the sake of doing it. Dealers should be comfortable with doing nothing and not being noticed because that is a large portion of their job. Why should they do nothing in these situations? Well, for one, in my first and second example, mistakes can be made in telling the player how much it is or in dragging too many or too few chips into the middle, thereby misrepresenting the size of the raise. Also, you’re giving more information than the players are entitled to without asking. If player A bets and player B raises, it’s up to player A to find out information about that bet, not the dealer or the other players. With regards to those first two examples again, it also sometimes messes up the sizing of the bets. I can think of several times where I raised an amount I did not want to because the dealer dragged the original bet into the pot unsolicited, causing me to miscalculate the total bet size. Finally, the third example I gave of messing with the muck or chips while the hand is being played will lead to bigger mistakes like burning and turning early or missing a player’s action during the hand. I know that people feel a need to justify their position or find something to do while nothing is going on. Silence and inactivity can be devastating to some people and they often want to fill it with action or words for the sake of action or words. Mike Birbiglia’s 2008 comedy special title sums it up nicely: “What I Should Have Said Was Nothing.” ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG