The Chat Box Makes Me Crazy

At every online poker table there is a chat box where the players can talk to each other. Typically in the bigger games there is no chat whatsoever because most of the players are focused on playing instead of chatting. Some of the players just don't care to chat and others are playing in so many games that they can't pay attention to the chat and play at the same time (usually I fall into the latter category).But as you might imagine, there are some people that use the chat box even if no one is responding or paying attention.

The area where the chat is displayed has 4 tabs (chat, stats, info and notes) and I try to click on one of the other tabs so I'll have something on my screen in that area other than the chat. But the chat tab is the default sometime I can't help but notice what people are saying.

I think the original intent of the chat box was to make the game seem more like a real poker game where people are talking all the time. What it seems to be in actuality is a place for people to bitch about their bad luck to a bunch of people who don't care.

It's also a place for know it alls to show off how much they think they know. These guys always have names like "kidsgotskillz" or "thnx4yourmoney" or "Iruleallpoker" and none of them are any good. They tell the other players how bad they're playing (usually just after they lost a pot). They call other players donkeys (really!) which somehow became a term that people who think they are personally awesome in every way use for people who they think are bad poker players. Sometimes they shorten it to simply "donk" as in, "How could you call me there you ****ing donk!" Of course these mental giants often don't bother with full sentences and simply type in "DONK!" or my personal favorite "DONK DONK DONK!"

A few other common expressions that drive me bananas are "obv," and "omg." You'd be shocked (shocked!) to see how many people type in obv after they lose a pot in which they had the best hand at some point. To the best of my knowledge it means something along the lines of "OBViously that was going to happen...obviously I was going to lose that hand because the universe is against me...obviously I am a great player and the only way I could lose was if the fates smashed my hopes of winning that pot like a blacksmith smashing a egg on fiery anvil. Obviously."

OMG is short for "Oh My God" and it also typically comes out right after someone loses a pot. It always makes me think that the person saying it is a 13 year old girl. As in "Like, oh mah god...Tiffany (all 13 year old girls have friends named Tiffany)...I, like, just totally lost that pot to a TOTAL gut shot straight!"

For the record anyone who types in "omg obv" (I've seen it before) should be covered in chum and tossed into piranha infested waters.

A few times after people have won pots from me I've seen them type in "Oops." As in a (totally sarcastically) "Oops! Did I just win that pot? Oops I didn't want that to happen! OOPS! Sorry!" More frequently I find myself in a spot where I know my opponent either has something like a full house or absolutely nothing. So I call, and they have the full house and then they type in "thank you" or "ty." Bastards! Why can't they just take the pot and be happy about it? I have no patience for people who rub it in when they win. Once again, chum 'em up, get on the piranha phone, call in some piranhas, and chuck 'em into the water.

Like I said, I try not too look at the chat box and even if I do glance at it for whatever reason 99% of the time I have no reaction whatsoever. But today I happened to look down in one of my cash games and someone hit me with a "ty" after beating me in a big pot. Then a minute later in the one tournament I was playing (one of my freerolls) this guy says "Acesedai (that's my screen name) you are terrible. You are such a donk!"

"WHAT!" I thought. The thing that blew my mind here was not only had I not been involved in a pot with this guy, I hadn't done anything that was even close to unreasonable. I thought back and in the preceding half hour or so I'd only played three hands. Two of them were medium pairs and since the blinds were big and I was somewhat short stacked I moved all in. I got called once by AQ and won and the other time I'd stolen the blinds.

On the third hand, which was about 4 or 5 hands before this guy started yapping, I moved all in for about 4,000 from the button with A5. The blinds were 400/800 with a 50 chip ante so there was already 1650 in the pot and I would have been more than happy to just win the blinds. But the big blind had pocket tens and called me. I was about a 70/30 underdog, but I flopped an ace and won the pot.

So when the guy said what he said I responed with "Thanks, same to you." Which launched him into this massive rant about how I was moving in way to much and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. At this point he had less than 1,000 chips (I had over 8,000), so I said "Great, hows that 1,000 chip stack working out for you? Good luck with that." On the very next hand he goes broke. But I get more ranting from him concluded with "I KNOW you (meaning me) are a losing player!" WHAT! I know I should have just stopped reading, but I was getting cheezed off (I think that's what it was). So I replied "You couldn't be more wrong." There was a little more back and forth in there, but I can't exactly remember it.

Then presumably he used one of the various websites out there (like sharkscope and the pokerdb) where you can search other players by username and get a summary of their past results. I knew he'd looked me up because he started spiting back correct data about my past results while telling me how much I suck. Let me say that again. HE LOOKED UP MY RESULTS AND CONTIUED TO TELL ME HOW MUCH I SUCK! It made no sense.

So I looked him up. He'd played about 900 SNG's with an average buy in of $20 and was winning about 50 cents per. I won more today than he's won in all the SNG's he's ever played! I tried looking up his cash game stats, but they only keep track of games bigger than $1/$2 NL and $5/$10 limit and he had no data, meaning the biggest games he'd ever played in were smaller than those limits. I pointed out these facts to him and he told me how much I sucked. Somebody get on the piranha phone!

This is why I try to ignore the chat box.