by Nick Laurrell
I hate players who take it upon themselves to denote every dumb play at the poker table:
“Terrible play… donk… bad bluff… donk… stupid… donk”
First of all, get a new word. At this point, donk is a donkish term for bad play. Secondly, if there were no “donks” out there making stupid moves then the only way that any one would ever make money would be through being on the right side of cold decks. So don’t go hating on bad players because if it wasn’t for them, then your genius play would just be run-of-the-mill crap gambling gambling. It is in part because of the donkeys that poker is as profitable as it is.
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of people scaring perfectly bad players away and then being forced myself to sit in the brewing stew of super-tight-know-it-all-pot-odds-shackled players. Life is too short to spend your time with judgmental tightwads.
So I’ve got a plan. It’s a small plan and kind of trivial, but it’s a start.
In the spirit of the many great acronyms that the internet has given birth to: lol, lmao, gg, gl, own, pwn, etc, I give you dBAD (pronounced dee – bad) which stands for “don’t be a douchebag.”
Say you are at a table and a guy calls two other all-ins holding pocket fives. Now the guy with the fives is obviously way behind and making a mathematically unsound decision – to say the least – when a six miraculously hits the turn, giving the idiot the winning Number of the Beast.
One guy who lost holding QQ forces out “nh” while two other uninvolved players limit their chat to “wow.” And then comes the inevitable attack from a guy who had nothing to do with the hand itself but cannot abide such behavior at the poker table… his poker table:
“For making a call like that you sure have a lot to learn about poker.” As true as that may be, what good does it do anyone to say that?
So what do you do?
“dBAD”
And even though that guy won’t get it the first time, our movement will grow. Like a revolution, dBAD will grow upon the fingertips of even-tempered poker players everywhere, shutting down the wannabe Matusows and Tony Gs with an acronym of defensive aggression and sleek musicality (seriously, doesn’t dee bad just sound cool?)
So if you are sick of whiny know-it-alls spewing their hateful advice wherever and whenever bad luck strikes at the poker table, join me in proclaiming loudly and in 3/4s caps lock glory:
dBAD.