Treat People Nicely

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but you should treat people nicely. That SHOULD be the end of the column. Instead, I’m going to spend the next page or so of magazine space detailing some instances from the last few nights of poker of people not treating others so nicely, and telling you why it’s bad. I shouldn’t have to. You should just be nice.

Anybody who plays with me will probably come away with a similar opinion of me. I’m quiet and reserved at the poker table. For the most part, I don’t seek out conversation. I will get involved if people get me involved. If it’s a table of people that I’m comfortable with, I’ll open up a little bit more. I’m an introvert, and interacting with other people tires me. I’m happy at home with my family and in other social situations that I’m comfortable in, but if I’m playing with new people or having to assert myself socially, I get emotionally drained. I still do my best to treat everyone, especially dealers, with respect. People that are harder for me to interact with, I tend to just try to ignore or be terse with. I still try to be nice to them when I do interact.

Last night, there was a player in our game that was a little drunk when it started. Throughout the day and night, he got more drunk and what started out as a little light needling turned into full-on rude behavior. He would say something rude to me and then say, ‘I’m not trying to disrespect you, just joking around.’

He ended up taking it too far with me, I told him he crossed a line, and he was nicer after that. As is usually the case with drunk people, he was playing loosely and really splashing around in pots. He potted it when checked to him close to 100 percent of the time for about three hours straight, winning a lot of money initially and then losing it all back. Throughout all of this time, on the way up and on the way back down, he was rude to players and dealers. It was a tough situation for the dealers and he tried to make up for it by tipping exorbitantly.

At one point, he was admonishing a dealer for what he deemed as not speaking clearly enough to tell him the size of the pot, when he was just misunderstanding him due to the dealer’s accent. I chimed in a few times to tell him to take it easy on the dealers, they’re just doing their job. He made the dealers reach into his stack to take money out when he verbally announced a pot-sized bet and was called. He never threw cards or anything ban-worthy, but he stepped close to the line more than a few times and was just generally unpleasant. If he wasn’t attempting to light 2,000 big blinds on fire, he would have been insufferable to be around.

He obviously created an interesting dynamic at the table, and his hostility bled over into other players. Most took it in stride, but a few complained to the floor about his treatment, not of them, but of the dealers. Playing in Los Angeles for 10 years or so, I have definitely seen worse behavior at the table, but that doesn’t make it acceptable.

Then, something surprising happened. One of the other players lost a big three-way pot with K-Q-9-x to K-J-9-x on a K-9-8 flop (the third player was the drunk guy and had J-8-7-3 or something) when the turn and river came running jacks. He started shouting and swearing and threw his cards across the table. It was an outrageous display to cap a night that had already been full of some crazy things being said, if at a lower volume. It also came out of nowhere. It was a tough one to lose, but he’s chopping the pot the vast majority of the time (he has 45.5 percent equity vs 39.7 percent and 17.8 percent). I was surprised it happened and the floor was already hovering around our table and gave him a talking-to.

Speaking of the floor, they handled everything as well as they could. The drunk guy never really said or did anything that warranted being kicked out, but they hovered around the table after some people complained and that really toned him down quite a bit.

I’m glad the man came to play in our game and lost a bunch of money. I wish that he could have done so in a way that wasn’t so outwardly hostile. There’s really no reason to treat people the way he did other than you believe yourself to be more important and better than those people. It’s a simple rule, and one that I try to keep to heart whenever I can: Treat people as you would want to be treated. I try to live by it in my daily life, with my family, with my friends, and with those that I play poker. It would be better for the poker world and the world in general if more people had the same thought. ♠

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