I recently sat down in a $1-$2 NL game at the Red Rock and was up a couple hundred playing short handed. It was late, or early, however you look at it, and we were playing 5-handed. One player, in his mid-late twenties, had a stack similar to mine $4-$500, while everyone else had about $100 stacks. Obviously we got involved fairly often since no one else had any chips to give either of us action. I end up giving him a bad beat and he starts to berate me. Usually this stuff doesn’t bother me too much because they usually are missing some key details that I wouldn’t want to tell them. He kept threatening that he’d take all my chips eventually and that I should keep playing how I was til I lose. I warned him to chill out because I might just leave. I’m up, its late, and there really isn’t much more to be won at the table. He didn’t stop, so, being a man of my word, I got up. The other players begged me to stay to keep the game alive. I just replied, blame that guy for breaking your game.
I normally never do this, but I was looking for a reason to get up and leave. It was late.
I see this as I’m dealing too often. A player gets beat by a bad player, then begins to berate his play, even though he really wants him to call with a two outer since he is a big dog. But the “better” player berates the player who was trying to give him money. Two things happen. The “better” player ends up putting himself on tilt since he doesn’t fully understand the concepts of winning poker and the “bad” player is no longer having fun, which can lead him to quit playing altogether, taking money off the table.
This happens a lot online, but it’s much worse when it happens live. The bad players need to have fun while they lose, if you berate them, you are just lowering your profits. I know it sucks to lose a big hand, but like they say, Its Poker. you should know that you won’t win everytime and that the longshot draws DO hit from time to time. If the losing players are having fun while they lose, they will be back. If they aren’t, they won’t Obviously they arent there to win, they want to have fun. Why would they come back if the few times they do win, someone is there giving them shit about it?
The guy told me that I was too sensitive and that if I couldn’t take his light abuse, I wouldn’t make it. Sad thing is, with his attitude, he won’t make it. Festering on losses and driving his action away from the table is just bad poker. I knew leaving would get him more angry than anything I could say. Hopefully he learned a lesson there, but probably not.

At this year’s WSOP a group of six players from stoxpoker.com went up against the latest version of polaris - an AI poker playing bot. In the year previous Polaris went against Phil Laak and Ali Eslami and had a record of one win, two losses and a tie. This year, it was three wins, two losses, and a tie meaning that the machine beat the humans. It’s a very interesting read and shows the hand histories in the article at Stoxpoker.com. Check it out HERE

This is known by many online poker players and there really is no reason to play online without rakeback. It is YOUR money you are getting back. Especially at playing the lower limits (you should get rakeback at higher limits as well) receiving rakeback can dramatically turn your profit margin from a slight to big winner. There are some people who grind out all day at a $1-$2 limit game and take down several hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a week. They may have an avg. of about $3/hr. at each game, especially if you multitable, you are getting tons of hands in, why wouldn’t you want a percentage of the rake back? If you figure about 100 hands/hour, over 3 tables is 300 hands, playing 6 handed $1-$2 Limit hold ‘em. Say you are getting on avg. about $0.18 a hand in rakeback, that’s $54/hr! As long as you can break even, rakeback is the best comp system developed for poker players. I personally have used rakeback, but for whatever reason, probably a large drop in my internet playing, I haven’t of late. I just created a new account, and plan on taking advantage of this offer again.

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It’s also a good idea to take advantage of deposit and reload bonuses. It won’t hurt to simply put in a few hundred dollars to take advantage of say a 20% reload bonus. This does however require you to put in a lot of hands to claim, and more importantly, bankroll management is key here. You will have more cash in your account than usual, and may want to step up with this new found money (even though its been provided by outside sources). Another great site for taking advantage of these offers is bonuswhores.com. They layout offers from all sites, and even allow you to find the best offer for the type of game you plan to play.

I recommend doing both for online players, but if any, rake back is a MUST! Take the percentage, it is YOUR MONEY!