[Closed] Encouraging Bad Play

I tell that he is Fucktard, and brake keyboard and mouse ;-)

taking fish's side in arguments is almost always +ev. If they are happy playing at your table, and there is someone there that admires their play, they are more likely to stay at your table.

I get really angry when someone gets angry and insults the play of fish at my table. It's probably my biggest pet peeve. So I almost always come to the side of the fish, and fiercely.

Compliment them on the pots they win, sympathize when they lose a buyin, and say you are lucky when you felt them. Say hello when they come to your table, and goodbye when they leave. when their A5 beats your AK, say that you had a bad feeling about the hand, and that they were destined to win.

When a shark criticizes their play, call the shark a donkey that can't even spell "poker".

I personally think that's all +ev.

I like the idea of calling sharks donkies when they criticize someone's play. I also like the "I had a bad feeling" comment. I will try these in my next session!

Sometimes it's tough to say "nh" when they obviously got super lucky with their 3-outer because when you say that I think it sounds sarcastic,... like you're saying the opposite. I never thought of taking the pure gamblers side,... ie. "the dealer's not giving me the cards today"

When some guy is flaming fish about bad play i start flaming that guy and then he turns his hate on me ♦

I think it is too hard to get emotional response from online pokerroom chat, so it is waste of time...

I just encourage the players to kill themselves. I don't know why. Must be a leak. Got to see a psychiatrist.

I always say nh, unlucky, you made right decision when in fact their play was hilarious. Why flaming them when they might adjust their play because of it?

If you take the fish's side in an argument you have a few benefits.

#1 the fish is confirmed in his bad play and will not only want to stay at the table but probably also continue to suck

#2 the shark will perhaps think you are also a fish and play badly against you thinking that you have the same fishy logic

#3 the shark might start tilting due to the overall stupidity level at the table

#4 hilarity ensues

That what happen to my table few days ago on NL25.

These 2 players was swearing to each other on how donkey they play. Then they start raising without any good hand. 5 other players were doubling up their $$$ thru these 2 players.

Sarcastic comment about his mom`s weight and lack of female intercourse in his potentially not very long life, should make less stable person 3bet most of your hands.

There was this huge fish in my table once, and a reg started flaming his every move. I took the fish's side and started inventing imaginary names for "advanced moves" to justify his plays. Another reg at the table caught on to what I was doing and we had a great time defending the fish and blaming luck whenever he lost a pot .

The hilarious part - the first reg actually took us seriously and started flaming us as well... "what, you guys serious? omg look at his play, you are such donks" ♠_biggrin:

This happened at my table a couple days ago. There was this calling station, who was raising, 3betting pretty often preflop, checking and calling passively after the flop. He was taking down a couple big pots with runner-runner flushes, 2 outer 2pairs and so on. One of the players made a very respectful comment about his play, something like:
wow ....... I admire your play
you must be playing a lot
keep up the good work!

Right after this he won again a ~60BB pot against me again with a 8high flush on the river against my AQ TPTK. After this I started to tell him wow, he must have felt that flush coming and how good he predicted and called down my 3/4 pot size raises.
He was indeed happy, and he just kept gambling OOP against me. It wasn't long until I won my money back... Twice. On top of what I lost ♦

@SoyCD, Joenaes
+1

I love it when I can get chummy with the fish... because fish are like chum for sharks after all.

When I'm chummy with the fish, I can attack anyone that criticizes their play and gang up with the fish, then the fish has a friend at the table and a reason to stay there.

I find it difficult if the fish and I have no rapport, and someone says something that might make the fish upset. I don't know how to intervene and tell the offending player to lay of the fish so that he
A) stays a fish
B) stays at my table
without making it obvious that I want the fish to be comfortable just so that I can continue taking his money. (and also because the fish is just playing for entertainment, and so I want to make him happy, and "gamble" with him)

Any ideas on how to handle this? I think this kind of Chatbox behaviour is very +ev and an important part of low limit internet poker.

for example, yesterday a fish said to a big fish "go ahead, call, I know you like to lose"

and I said "What was that?"

and he said "Oh, not you Ford, I was talking to XXX"

and I said "I'm here for the same reason you are, so let's be nice to each other, and we can continue playing a nice long session together =D"

Never call a loser a loser!!! Not at my table.

... any other ideas?

@Jeero

The lucky gambler, "I should have tipped the dealer" line is really useful with fish. It encourages them to believe that they are lucky, and that their luck will improve if they just raise that 72o one more time. You want to encourage a mystical/nonobjective attitude about poker with the fish. Never use words like "outs", "odds", or "equity" with fish, or even around fish.

I like to say things like "wow, YOU spiked that Ace on the river again! YOU are hot tonight" because this makes the fish think that THEY are good at this game, and didn't just get a little lucky one or two times.

......Obviously I've thought a lot about this. Really, people criticizing fishes is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Originally posted by Frakkk
This happened at my table a couple days ago. There was this calling station, who was raising, 3betting pretty often preflop, checking and calling passively after the flop. He was taking down a couple big pots with runner-runner flushes, 2 outer 2pairs and so on. One of the players made a very respectful comment about his play, something like:
wow ....... I admire your play
you must be playing a lot
keep up the good work!

Right after this he won again a ~60BB pot against me again with a 8high flush on the river against my AQ TPTK. After this I started to tell him wow, he must have felt that flush coming and how good he predicted and called down my 3/4 pot size raises.
He was indeed happy, and he just kept gambling OOP against me. It wasn't long until I won my money back... Twice. On top of what I lost ♦

I love this story! Thanks for sharing it.

So much for poker etiquette... ♦

I think it depends, sometimes I have seen a few fish that seem to change their play after I start flaming them, Like I had AQs and someone had T8s and we both flopped a flush and he turned a straight flush, I flammed him like crazy and after that he must've assumed I was on tilt because he started making the craziest 3bet bluffs OOP or overshoves on the river... it just made me laugh. Flaming noobs seems to get those rage filled feelings out of me that come when someone hits a 2 outer.
Though I can see the logic in the other viewpoint which I assume would work better than what I said above (at least in general).

This story telling reminds me of quite a while back... I was donking around on the low stakes at a table with 2 German fish on it who were playing quite poorly. I had 3bet them quite a few times and been generally aggressive and they were talking in German about how I was probably Russian or something and had a generally bad opinion of me.

Since I was playing a lot of tables I just read along - amused at their banter while continuing to dominate the table. So at one point or another when they were talking about how they didn't get enough good cards and how they were otherwise good players and talking poorly about others I interrupted them and said in German:

"Hey XXXXX, you are aware that you play 40% of your cards yet only raise 12% or? You also play a lot out of position without initiative and are really easy to exploit because of this. You should really tighten up preflop and stop limp calling or limp folding. "

After their astonishment about me understanding German passed, the other guy asked me about his stats. Having already taken enough of their money and planning on calling it a night in the near future I explained some of his leaks to him and recommended both of them to join PokerStrategy.com since the Bronze and Silver articles would surely do them well.

One of them was so grateful that he even asked me what my name was so he could enter me as a referrer.

He ended up signing up, getting the capital and I think he might still even be playing. I even got 25$ in TAF money ♦

2 Stacks + 25$ TAF money and the feeling of having given something back

now i know where all the fish went

I got called a donk the other day when my pocket tens full housed to beat his 89o. I riled him up and he tilted pretty bad and lost another buy in to me within minutes. good times.