Don’t Tap The Glass

If you’ve ever owned fish, you know that they will often swim right over to the outside of their aquarium tanks, staying there for long stretches of time with their mouths pressed right up against the barrier that separates them from the rest of the world. However, if you strike the glass wall that they are resting on, they will immediately swim away. It is from this phenomenon that the poker expression “Don’t Tap The Glass” was derived.

When you are playing in a poker game, it is important to remember just why everyone at the table is there. Basically, players have two desires: 1) To win money (although it can be successfully argued that some gamblers really have a deep-seated need to lose) and 2) To have fun. The social aspect of playing poker, even online, cannot be dismissed as unimportant to a player’s psyche. As is successfully argued in the classic book Homo Ludens, what really separates man from animals is the need to play, and poker is just one more outlet for that instinct.

So put yourself in the position of the “fish” that you are thinking about demolishing in the chat box for playing a hand stupidly but stumbling into the winning hand with a miracle river card. Since, in the long run, he is not going to win; in fact, the longer he stays in the game with you, the better your chances are of getting all that money back, and more, it really is incumbent upon you to make certain that he is at least having a good time on his way to the poor house, so that he will keep playing with you. With online games becoming tougher and tougher, can you really afford an outburst which, while it might feel temporarily gratifying as a release of your anger, is almost certain to get him to swim away, and studiously avoid any table at which you are playing for the rest of time?

In looking at how best to handle this situation, you can take a lesson from top professional Daniel Negreanu and his behavior during the first week of Poker Stars’ televised The Big Game. The concept of the show is that there are six players playing a cash game, one of whom is an amateur (the loose cannon) staked for $100,000 by the website. This player only gets to keep any profits he earns above his starting stack, while the others are top pros looking to take advantage of both him and one another. Negreanu sat directly to the left of the amateur, and went out of his way to make him feel not only welcome, but also comfortable at the table. He joked with him, complimented his play profusely, and made him feel as if he was his best friend in the world. At the same time, he brutalized the loose cannon by raising his bets continually, isolating him in one-on-one confrontations, and stealing pots mercilessly whenever he sensed the slightest weakness. In other words, he took advantage of the poor play of the loose cannon, while making absolutely certain that the loose cannon was having the time of his life. The loose cannon went away from the table with a lifetime of stories about going up against some of the best players in the world (and due to an unimaginably lucky hand, a profit at the expense of Phil Hellmuth), but Negreanu fleeced him for tens of thousands of dollars.

Remember that, ideally, you want to sit at tables where you are surrounded by fish. The only way to do that is to keep them happy, while removing as much of their hard-earned cash as you possibly can. Just as you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar, a little friendliness at the table goes a long way to insuring that your fish won’t swim away.