10 Stupid Things in Poker

It's been awhile since we've gone on a good old-fashioned rant. A while back, we wrote about ten cool things about poker. Now let's turn the tables and discuss ten stupid things in poker. 1. National Anthem at the WSOP Caesars Entertainment's decision to start playing the national anthem at the WSOP is just... weird. Since when did poker become the Olympics? There is a habit among major poker operators to take the game a little more seriously as is necessary. See: PokerStars refusing to run a series of parallel, smaller buy-in events to coincide with WCOOP less they detract from the "prestige" of those events. They're just poker tournaments. Can we all just loosen up a little? online poker 468x60 2. Angle-shooters/Scumbags There are a lot of really great people in poker. Unfortunately, there are quite a few scumbags and angle-shooters involved in the game too. What's sad is that the evil-doers (as George Bush might say) get far more attention than the "good guys" of poker. It creates a false perception that poker is overran by unethical sleazeballs. It's a shame and probably prevents a lot of mainstream sponsorship money from entering the game. 3. PokerNews' Ashley Madison Ads Recently, the largest poker media outlet on the web, PokerNews.com, was running Ashley Madison banner ads on their site. For the uninitiated, Ashley Madison is a dating site geared to help married people cheat on their spouses. So basically PokerNews is evidently so desperate for revenues that they're willing to stoop to promoting the sleaziest paid networking site on the web. This comes at a time when poker is struggling for global legitimacy. But hey, anything to increase one's net worth, right Tony G? 4. Chip Count Updates The frustrating thing about following a lot of poker players on Twitter is the endless amount of chip count tweets that pop up in your stream. Note to poker players everywhere: people care about your non-final table chip count in whatever tournament you're in like they care about what you had for breakfast. Stop reporting it to everyone, please. 5. Bureaucrats Politicians were sent here to ruin things for everyone. Take New Jersey governor Chris Christie for example. A year ago, he vetoed an online poker bill that would have legalized the game in his state citing concerns about the legality of the bill on a federal level. Now, this same governor is going to war with every major American pro sports league in order to push legislation that would legalize online sports-betting in his state. So let's recap: a year ago, he vetoes an online poker bill because he was afwaid of upsetting da big bad gubament. And now he is almost literally giving the finger to anyone who will stand in his way of legalizing an ostensibly less wholesome form of gambling than poker, sports-betting. What happened to Chris Christie: Master of Compliance from a year ago?! Politicians are the worse. 6. durrrr-esque Wizards Playing live poker has become nearly intolerable due to the number of 20-something rockstars in the game. It seems almost impossible to find a game without some young guy mimicking Tom Dwan's phlegmatic, tortoiselike approach to grinding. Poker is supposed to be a stimulating activity but it's quickly become unbearable as a result of the number of personality-less drones in hoodies with headphones and gaped-open mouths who take 60 seconds to think through every decision. In online games, these same guys can make 30 decisions a minute, but put them at a live table and they morph into dimwits. 7. People Who "Just Want the Bracelet" People that say they "just want the bracelet more than the money" at the WSOP should be disqualified from life. Is that not the stupidest thing you've ever heard? There is never less than $150,000 on the line for first-place in a WSOP event. It is simply absurd and inexcusable to ever value the bracelet more than the first-place prize. They give away like 70 of those damn things every year. Who cares anymore?! 8. Lazy Poker Players As a stereotype, poker players are painfully lazy people. We here at PokerTips cannot claim to be shining exceptions to this, so this is a bit hypocritical of us. But more the point, if poker players weren't so lazy, there wouldn't be silly things like Poker Refugees in existence. Honestly, $1,000 for a service that you could do yourself in three hours of work? It's pathetic that such a service even exists. 9. Discussing Strategy at the Table Worse than the durrr-esque wizards mentioned above are the players in live games who blabber the whole time about poker strategy. Some people just seem incapable of playing the game without breaking down every step of their (often undeveloped) thought processes for everyone at the table to hear. Not only is this bad for table dynamics, it's also just boring as hell. Is there a single justification for ever discussing strategy at the table? 10. Indignant Poker Pros Listen, we get it. It sucks that Black Friday happened and poker is in some weird state of prohibition in the U.S. right now. But can we stop drawing a parallel to poker anytime there's an injustice in the world? Acting like the U.S. is the worst country ever because you can't play online poker or smoke marijuana just wreaks of spoiled entitlement and an awful sense of perception of one's standing in the world. Crying about poker not being legal and bringing it up as a way of relating to people with real problems in this life make you a painfully unlikable little turd.