TWO TIMERS GET CAUGHT As in married life, so it is with poker. When players get a little bit of experience under their belt and have a few big wins there’s the danger they develop arrogance. A sure sign of this is those cocky players who play two tables at once. Firstly, you’re announcing to more mature and experienced players that you have no patience. More alarmingly, you’ll soon be demonstrating to your wallet that concentration goes out of the window when you try handling doubled-up games. So how do more experienced players know you’re playing two games at once? It’s not rocket science. They study the lists in the lobby as a matter of course before they join a game. It’s the smart thing to do. They know reckless players don’t tend to take any precautions against this pre-play checking. Players who attempt two-timing are restless and that always leads to playing hands that should be folded. If you’re playing two tables in tandem it’s all but impossible to make notes or study the opposition in any depth. The cure for this behaviour is usually swift and expensive. One of the games starts to go badly and restlessness turns to recklessness and as the concentration becomes almost totally diverted to the losing game, the second game begins to get dismantled by someone sharp enough to exploit the lapse. Professional players actively seek out “double dippers” for sophisticated slaughter. Don’t fall prey to them. Monogamy in poker is rewarded. Think of it as loyalty to your chip stack.
GREED IS GOOD! Those of us who are old enough will remember Mike Douglas’s notorious words from the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good!”. Well, it certainly can be. The average person in the street probably sees poker players as “only in it for themselves” and this may well be accurate. Poker however throws up some wonderful oddball characters. Take the amazing Barry Greenstein, an award winning software genius turned poker enthusiast who was fortunate enough to be able to retire from working for a living age 36. As poker’s male equivalent of Mother Teresa, Barry gives all his poker winnings to charity. Every penny. But pennies aren’t actually what he gives. So far his favoured charity, Children Inc., an organisation dedicated to helping orphans and abandoned children, has been on the receiving end of most of the $3,000,000 he has donated to good causes so far. Maybe the Patron Saint of Luck favours the generous among us.
