Transcript
Hey, I’m professional poker player Nicky Numbers, and I’m going to talk to you today about poker etiquette.
The last piece of poker etiquette is a very important one and it has to do with when you’re not in the pot at all. So all this action goes on, we see a flop, somebody bets, I don’t want to continue with the hand so I muck my cards, the action goes, and then the turn card appears and I go “ohhh! Unbelievable!”, where I’m clearly indicating to the table that that card would have been a valuable one for me because my hand would have improved. You see people do this so regularly at the table pre-flop when they muck two cards that were not a playable hand and then they look at the flop and they see that they would have connected. They would have made two pair, or they would have made a flush, or a straight, or trips, or full house, or whatever strong hand they would have made if they played, but they didn’t.
They’re reacting behaviorally at the table. That gives other players information about the hand. Often it can be very key information. Giving away information about the hand while it’s still going on, especially when you’re not in the hand is some of the worst poker etiquette that you can have at the table. Even worse than that is actually talking about the cards that you folded. So instead of just signing and reacting that you would have improved your hand, actually talking about it is so much worse. People regularly whisper at the table whisper like “I folded two clubs”. Oh, loud. Because they’re not in the hand so they don’t have any vested interest in protecting the secret of their cards. If they were in the hand, obviously they would shut up about it but they’re not in the hand.
So they’re choosing to be disrespectful to the other players that are in the hand, and potentially giving an information edge to one or all of those players in the pot. If somebody’s seated next to that’s in the hand, they might hear the whisper while someone might not. That’s unfair because it’s a disadvantage to some of the players at the table. When you fold a hand and you’re no longer involved in the action, do not talk about the hand while it’s going on. It doesn’t matter what you folded. It doesn’t matter that you were or were not in the pot. None of that matters. While a hand is going on, don’t discuss it. That’s the best policy you can possibly have from a poker etiquette standpoint.
