In an online poker tournament chat box:
[NAME REMOVED] yahneverknow have you seen the movie “let it ride”
A few minutes later, because I hadn’t been paying attention to the chat box…
[yahneverknow] no i haven’t. why?
*crickets*
In the meantime, still playing the tournament, I look up the movie at IMDb and find out it’s a gambling movie. I dig a little more. The main character played by Richard Dreyfuss has a penchant for the ponies, but is a gambling loser. One day he wins and keeps winning. I guess the rest of the movie follows him around as he keeps winning and people start hanging on.
Oh.
Hmmm…
So.
Why exactly would you ask someone that out of the blue? Especially someone that you’ve never talked to before that moment and that you couldn’t have played with much, considering I had only joined the site about 2-1/2 weeks before and I had only really been playing for a week and a half.
Oh. Yah, right. I forgot. I’ve been tagged “YOU’RE IT” by the “in” crowd.
I feel like it’s the ‘80s and “Heather” is the popular name.
I know this particular person was watching a tournament where I dumped a bunch of chips late, bluffing into the girl on my left who kept calling with a pair of Aces with a 4 kicker (A-4 in hand). There were all sorts of possibilities on the board for flushes and straights, etc. Since it was a tournament and I had enough chips to cover her stack, I wasn’t terribly concerned about losing. (Okay, you can insert HERE whatever you want to say about my tournament strategy. I’m not defending it. I’m just saying I knew she was weak and I couldn’t be completely out of the tournament if I lost the hand.) Admittedly, I was seriously messing around, but I generally bluff bet the same pot proportions as when I’m betting with a hand. Oh, and I had a few outs. And the girl did not have a very strong hand. But, yes. It was stupid. And I knew it was stupid.
Um.
So what?
(I placed 10/251 in that tournament. She ended up around 7 or 8, I think.)
After losing a serious chunk of my stack putting that player all-in, a previously unseen railbird chimed in:
[previously unseen railbird] You can’t bluff the girl to your left.
Ahem.
What?
I can bluff whomever I want.
Whether it’s successful or not remains to be seen.
And, I’m sorry, but there is no one on this earth that you can’t bluff successfully at some point. If you’re trying to tell me I suck at bluffing, just say it. Dude, seriously? This snarky stuff is worse than middle school popular girls. If you think I’m a horrible player, just say it. I will say, “Yes, sometimes I play horribly. You should like that instead of complaining.”
There were a few other comments by this Mr. Bird (I’m assuming male) and a few others that popped out of the woodwork. I tried to ignore it all until…
I made the “mistake” of “LOL”-ing:
Everyone had folded to the SB to my right who went all in and I looked at my hand… which was 2-3 off suit. Sorry. That made me laugh. It was especially funny to me since the last 12 or so hands I had had were unpaired, unsuited, unconnected, un-semi-connected, and all values were under 10. Since I was so short-stacked at that point, I was hoping for anything… a face card… 5-6 diamonds… something that I could end my misery with, but no dice. So I laughed.
Mr. Bird actually said, after I laughed and folded:
[Mr. Bird] <OTHER PLAYER’S NAME> doesn’t bluff.
*blink*
Did I really just read that?
Did someone really just pretend they knew what I was thinking that I was as snarky as they are?
AND THEN
Scoff at it?
Why do I feel the need to explain my play?
Not only is that ridiculous, but I’d even say it’s ludicrous.
But still… I say:
[yahneverknow] I didn’t think he was.
That quieted them down for all of about 10 minutes.
The best part about all of this is that most of these people are MALE. And most of them think I am MALE. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but it certainly makes it entertaining when they figure out I’m a girl. And I know when they find out, a lot of them don’t believe it. I don’t know if it’s that I’m too aggressive at times? Or I don’t giggle enough? Wait. I do tend to laugh a lot into the chat box and all it does is piss people off. Having spent most of my life hanging out with boys more than girls, I guess I might “come off” as a guy in an internet chat box, but geez… More girl-playing-poker adventures will probably show up on this blog, but I’ll leave that subject alone for now.
Anyway… this person mentions that movie to me, why exactly?
I don’t particularly like reading into things, but seriously? There’s no way that I can see to interpret it except that this person is comparing me to the Richard Dreyfuss character. That would make me… a continual loser who is on a lucky streak.
So. You’ve seen me play one, maybe *two* tournaments? And you’ve reached this conclusion already? Huh. Okay.
Okay. So I’m outspoken and I can piss people off by telling them the truth.
I won’t apologize for that.
Okay. So I KNOW that I play like I’m missing a brain sometimes.
But, honestly, that’s usually on purpose. <insert evil laugh>
Okay. So I tend toward the didactic delivery.
Eh. “Could’a’ been a t-teacher.” Or so they tell me.
Have your friends.
Rail ’em.
Cheer ’em on.
Be bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy when they win a hand.
But enough with the junior high shit.
Get over yourselves.
Cheers!
Michelle
p.s., Almost forgot! Mr. Railbird is the same person whose anonymized comments on this blog are featured in this post. See, all the above happened before people realized that I might know what I was doing. A lot of them treat me very differently than they did before. Interesting how that happens.