Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Last night I played some more NLHE at Venetian and found myself in an enviable position: on the immediate left of an extremely nice fellow who was an absolutely horrible poker player. It gave me an opportunity to practice making a losing player feel like he was having fun. I chatted about his home, his work, his Vegas trip and anything else I could. It was effective enough that after I stacked him a second time, we had a good laugh about it. He raised preflop and noted that I hadn't seen a flop in a while. I told him just for that I'd call him. I flopped top two and got his whole stack, with a teasing admonition afterwards to "Be careful what you wish for!" that made him laugh.

Stony-faced seriousness tends to be off-putting to recreational 1-2 NLHE players. They don't like it, they don't enjoy it and I've seen it drive them away from a table. Since they're the majority of the softest ranks in Vegas NLHE, it makes sense to ditch that mentality and try to laugh it up with them so that they relax and enjoy their losing.

My new friend, a Subway franchise operator in Charlotte, stayed in the game until 5am. I can't tell you how much he was stuck. I tagged him twice and I wasn't the only one. But when he left he couldn't have been in a better mood. And with $1,002 of profit, neither could I.