Online Poker Annoyances

• 08.06.2025 7:18 am
• headhunter
• 0 Comments

I started writing this article and then sought help at a couple of poker forums I belong to. I asked people what really, really, really pisses them off when they are playing poker online. I got some surprising responses and some unique ones. In no particular order the poker annoyances mentioned included:

Someone who runs out the clock every time it's his or her turn to act

You know he or she is just being a jerk and doing it to annoy everyone at his or her table. It’s legal but it’s not moral so to speak. A similar annoyance occurs when someone has a bad, or slow, Internet connection and constantly disconnects or times out. They can't help it but it's irksome.

Trash Talking/Chatting/Discussing the hand in play

Maybe they, not so casually, mention their discards. You know exactly what I mean. Not a good thing and illegal under tournament rules to say nothing of at a ring table. Just chatting/talking too much drives some people crazy and can slow down the game a lot. Someone mentioned people blurting out their hand before they go all in. “I have to go, I have J4o”. So 5 people call and guess what? The J4o wins…and guess what else? The fool never had to go in the first place. The person who came up with this one HATES that. Imagine my surprise. Another person's pet peeve is, "When people say 'NH' when the player sucked out and caught his 95% negative play 2 outer on the river. I hate it when people make those crappy calls, then get incredibly lucky and people say NH." GG falls in the same category as far as I am concerned, everyone says it. It means nothing anymore except at the end of a tournament when the second place person, who I've been playing H2H for 40 minutes, says it to me. Then it MEANS something. A different person said, "NH is so much more polite than “Nice suckout” or “I can’t believe you played those rags.” I think NH in most cases implies congrats on raking the pot for whatever reason. I do say NH if someone is showing hands after raising without callers, I hope my kind words encourage them to keep showing me the type of cards they are playing and how they played them." Here's another one: Players who ask me while they are thinking of calling, “Will you show?” I always say yes and I never do…Hey poker is all about lies and deception right?

Not being a good winner or loser

Again you all know what I am talking about here. There is a FullTilt commercial that cracks me up where Howard Lederer is up against someone who catches a straight flush and then goes crazy, tossing his chips into the air and dancing around…Hysterically funny in the commercial but not in real life. Although the riot that would ensue in the melee over the chips would be interesting to watch. How would you do that online I wonder? One person said, "There's nothing worse than having to listen with someone who can’t believe they lost with their slow-played pocket aces and has to keep bringing it up." See the next topic……

Whining about bad beats

We all know YOUR sad, sad, saddddddddddd story. We could tell you 3 of our own that make us pucker up just remembering them. STFU!

Sitting out for no reason when someone has run up a big lead

This one is personal; others might say that this is an effective strategy that makes sense sometimes. Remember, I said this one was personal. It just irks ME personally when someone does it. Did I say this was personal? There was a time in one of the SNG series games at Jetset where this was done and I was just burning over it and I wasn’t the only one. It affected who won that game a lot more than the skill of the players involved.

Coaching from the rail

This one started some lively debate. Observers should shut up and let one player play one hand was the general consensus. Once upon a time I was polled, by a poker site I believe, about whether I thought shutting off ALL chat was a good thing to do when a player was all-in in a tournament. I think there are times (late in tournaments in particular) when this is a good thing but mostly it's not. A question arose about someone who has a "REAL" coach who is critiquing his play in real-time via an instant messenger or phone. Is getting coached via IM (instant messenger i.e. MSN, Yahoo or whatever) legal? You've got me. If you have a personal coach that is watching and critiquing YOUR play and it’s strictly between the 2 of you, that’s okay with me. At least I, personally, think it is. They could review the hand histories later and have more information (then you could use a program like Poker Tracker to get even more useful stats that way) but again that is between player and coach. That’s a PRIVATE transaction between consenting adults…Fine with me. If a player and coach were at the same table, ring or tournament, I’d think that, ethically, they’d play their own hands and not share information or collude in any way although they might review things later. That would fall into the category of collusion, which is CHEATING. I also think the student would be at a big disadvantage and would avoid this situation at all costs. As far as instant messengers go, I just don’t know what to say. I mostly leave mine off so it is never a problem for me but I know others chat during tournaments and I figure that it’s way, way out of my control so I shrug and ignore it. As far as being coached at this point, I figure I have a solid understanding of what to do when and if someone else prefers to rely on his or her “Coach,” so that’s okay with me. In a tournament setting I couldn’t care less who else is playing at the table with me, I’m gonna play my cards and they are gonna play theirs…If their cards are better or they simply outplay me, they will win. That's poker.

Schooling the other players

We all know that some people out there know more about poker theory, tournament play, statistics and psychology than Sklansky/Malmuth, Doyle Brunson, Drs. Alan Schooonmaker and John Feeney, and Lee Jones combined. Write a book and make some money, but don’t pontificate to me at a poker table while I’m playing there and can't walk away.

Cheating/Collusion

Do I have to say anything about this? There were a number of comments about whether something is cheating or not. For example, a player is sitting out (see #5) at the final table and the remaining players discuss how to eliminate that individual. That's collusion and could get THEM eliminated if anyone complains. Is allowing someone to play using your account cheating? After all, it is YOUR account and YOUR money…Again this is a very touchy subject. It's against the TOS of most sites to do this but they don't seem to enforce that particular rule strictly. I'm of the school that says it's not legal, but there are times when it makes sense to do it for a variety of reasons and, ultimately, it is that person's money. One situation might be that your connection has gone flaky while you are playing a tournament. Another might be that you registered, but can't get to a PC to play for some reason. A third might be if someone got sick in the middle of a game and asked someone to fill in for them. Soft playing and chip dumping to other players also got mentioned by a number of people. Someone said, "If GOD was an online poker player we would have had 11 commandments. One and only one player to a hand."

Stealing Blinds

Someone complained about a situation where he got disconnected while at a final table and instead of sitting out and waiting to see if he would re-connect, the players took his blinds, which were high at 600/1200 (high enough to hurt him). I can see this person's point but I have no idea what the right thing to do is. Is he coming back? Who knows? What is the RIGHT thing to do? Something like this can cause some hard feelings. I'm at a loss on this one. (If you want to share your thoughts, email me).

Chopping or NOT chopping

Splitting up the money at the end of a tournament is done frequently and sometimes this is the best thing for the players involved to do. But all of them have to be comfortable with it…Every player involved has an irrevocable VETO. Period. If they say no, you keep on playing and attempt to see to it that they get less than they would have gotten if they'd agreed to the chop. One person pointed out a situation where someone wanted to chop but she was firmly against it and the other person's response to her saying no was to start going all-in on every hand. Interesting strategy. I believe it is Mike Sexton who says, "That one works until it doesn't." I guess they REALLY wanted to get out of there huh?

The Daylight Savings Time Shift

The daylight savings time shifted all the tourney start times earlier for those of us that live in states without the change. I would have never thought of that daylight savings time thing since I am in Illinois where we have it.

Begging or asking for money at tables

This is definitely poor etiquette. Spamming tables and begging for money is unacceptable, not to mention that it will get your chat banned at a lot of sites. The first time someone asked me for a virtual handout I was speechless. Now I just ignore them unless I know them. If I know them, they know better than to do it at a poker table.

My favorite of all the ones people mentioned

"My main pet peeve is having good players at the table, they make it so much harder for me to win."