Liar’s Poker

This week’s blog is just going to be a quick rant about a topic 98% of you won’t know or care about. For you, here’s a cute cat gif.

In poker, when someone bets and everyone folds, the hand is over. The person with the winning hand does not need to show their cards. Generally, it is not in their best interest to do so, as it would give opponents information about how they played the hand.

Of course, if they want to show their hand, they can. If someone makes an extremely rare hand like a straight flush or four of a kind, they will usually show it. It’s not like opponents can really glean anything from a hand that comes up that infrequently anyway, and it’s just fun to see such a good hand.

So here’s what’s been bugging me. For some reason it’s been happening a lot in the games I’ve been in, and I feel that as a true patriot and gentleman I need to do my tiny bit to help stop it.

Someone will win a hand with a bet, decide not to show their cards, and then spend the next 10 minutes trying to convince the guy who folded that he bluffed.

One reason this has become more and more of a problem is that it seems to work. Dipshits will just take this information at face value and waste everyone’s time discussing their thought process and how “I thought it might have been a bluff” and “I really couldn’t call” and “I didn’t have anything either” and “but yeah it makes sense” and “good bet” and “man, I almost called you” and “nice play”.

I’d rather swallow your tobacco juice than listen to this crap.

Last week a guy won a pot and said, “that river was the only card I could win with.” The guy who lost didn’t respond. First guy said, “I mean, I didn’t have anything. That was just the only card where I could get away with the bluff.” Second guy still didn’t say anything. First guy said, “It had to put the four-card straight out there, or else I wouldn’t have even tried to bluff it.” Second guy still didn’t say anything and is now my favorite poker player even though I don’t know him because he made the first guy look like a complete douchenozzle.

Just take the pot and shut up.

The other day, I played a pot where a guy check-raised all in. I had a queen high flush. I thought he had a better flush, so I folded. If I had thought he didn’t have a better flush I would have called, because that’s how the game of poker works.

So he mucks his cards face down and then looks at me and says, “I didn’t have a flush.” He proceeded to tell me which cards he claimed to have and start in on this dime-store novel of a BS story I didn’t want to hear. So I cut him off and said, “I don’t believe you. It literally would have taken you one second to turn your cards over and prove that you bluffed me. Now you’ve spent a minute trying to convince me. I’m always just going to assume I made the right decision unless someone actually shows me otherwise.”

Kind of felt like Braveheart when he did his speech thingy.

Funny thing is, the guy said, “Hmmm…that makes sense. Probably a good policy.”

Why do people go out of their way to try to convince people they were bluffing? Obviously, it’s because they actually weren’t bluffing and they are disappointed that they didn’t get paid off on their last bet. Also, they hope they will get called the next time, when they also won’t be bluffing.

If I win a pot and the guy who lost wants to complain about it for 10 minutes or tell me how lucky I got or how poorly I played it, I can put up with that all day. It means I won. Plus, I understand that it’s frustrating to lose. So if you want to vent at me for a minute I won’t complain.

I’ve been bluffed thousands of times before and I’ll be bluffed thousands of times in the future. It’s part of the game. When someone shows me a bluff, I will think back to the hand and see if there’s anything I can glean from it, any way I could make the right decision the next time. But I’m not going to waste my time taking someone’s word for something when it can be so easily proven.

And neither should you. Stand up to the douchenozzles.