The 14 Virtues of a Winning Poker Player: Likeable

What It Means: Being likeable at the poker table means that you are respectful to the other players, don’t shoot any angles, engage the other players in conversation, and in general create a good atmosphere. Part of being a good poker player is to become the type of player that your opponents don’t mind losing money to!

The Flip-Side: A poker player, who berates poor plays, gloats when they are winning, and breaches poker rules/etiquette when it suits their purposes will find it harder to get action from the other players in the game. These players don’t realize just how grating their antics can be on the other players in the game, and how badly their opponents would like to “Stick it” to them.

How It Relates to Poker: When you criticize a player you are committing two costly errors: First of all you are basically telling them there is a correct and an incorrect way to play the game - something they may have not been aware of-so your critical talk is doing nothing but improving your opponents play. Second, the players at the other end of your abusive comments will be looking to “get even” with you. This causes them to play better against you in particular: you’d be surprised how many poker players actually know how to play fairly well when they want to!

By creating a good atmosphere you’ll make sure that players don’t leave the game when you sit down -something a jerk may see as a compliment, but is in fact a horrible outcome. You see, a really bad player who is a complete jerk is fine; players will deal with his antics because he is losing his money at the same time: A wining player who is a jerk is a different story altogether; often times players looking to have fun will just go find a new game where the atmosphere is less abrasive.

How to Cope: If you have a hard time holding in what you’re thinking you might want to simply clam-up, not saying anything at all, because sooner or later you’ll have a slip of the tongue and say something you shouldn’t. If you do berate or criticize another player the best thing to do is apologize, nothing is as healing as an “I’m sorry.” Just inform the person you’ve had a hard day and don’t mean to take things out on them.

Ways to Make Yourself More Likeable: The best way to become a likeable poker player is to simply be affable. While not everyone can be as upbeat and cheerful as Daniel Negreanu, you can -at the very least-be affable, and respectful toward the other players: Respond to greetings, acknowledge questions and comments, and just sit back and smile: After all, you should be smiling because you are taking these peoples’ money!