How to handle a player who gets under your skin.

[Dingdell]

I rarely tilt from other players behaviour, I tend to distance myself and watch from afar as they make a fool of themselves. However recently I have found 1 or 2 players who instantly rub me up the wrong way.

I am quite territorial at Luton and like being one of the only female players there as I think it can give me an edge. When there are other women playing I find it distracting - I think because they tend to be not as friendly as some of the other players - as if they have something to prove. In men I find this acceptable, in women unnecesarry. Women I know such as Edna, Claw etc are not included in this! We play with a smile.

Funnily enough at DTD I'm not territorial - this doesn't bother me - mainly because we are all so friendly towards each other.

But there are 2 players who as soon as I see them get my back up, both women. I only realised this when I watched a poker game on tv last night and there was JJ Lui another female who gets to me. I had a conversation with her in the loo's just before we got down to the last 2 tables at Palm Beach and she basically talked to me as if I was something off the bottom of her shoe. She then proceeded to raise my blinds every hand and I played differently because of it.

As playing with these players is unavoidable is there anything I can do to fight this red rage I get inside when I set eyes on them. It's like a massive dose of pmt and even their chip riffling is an enormous irritation that sets me off.

Anyone have insight as to why this happens? If I have a reason I can normally deal with it. What do you do when you see your least favourite player and find you are sitting next to them? Ipods don't tend to work for me - I can normally see them riffling their chips still.....

[AlexMartin]

Hard one, try and bust ppl at the table with reckless gambling hoping for a table break?

[Dingdell]

Hard one, try and bust ppl at the table with reckless gambling hoping for a table break?

On that basis we all irritate you then......

[DaveShoelace]

You're probably not going to be playing in next years Women World Open then?

Its probably not just yourself on this one. I know lots of women who get annoyed with, hate or feel threatened by women in similar strong positions as themselves. I used to see it a lot at my old job, where some of the female management were very calm under pressure and during conflict with 99% of the workforce, but would be fully prepared to claw the eyes out of another lady manager who made an ambiguous comment to them in a meeting.

I cant help but feel that the cause or solution to this problem is somehow something to do with shoes.....

[KingPoker]

It's definately a toughy.

There is no real answer as if someone suggestes sticking some earphones in then you are merely diguising the annoyance and not getting rid of the problem. It really just is a part of your game you will have to develop until you no longer find this an issue.

As Dave said, this is an occurance away from the poker table for some girls/women aswell.

[AndrewT]

Generally speaking, women will rarely pass up an opportunity to stick the knife in another woman in a competitive environment. I think this is because, as Tracey has said, women do have an advantage when dealing with men - the men just will not view a woman as a threat. This gives a lone woman an advantage, an advantage which is lessened by the presence of another woman.

This is particularly noticable on TV programmes like Big Brother or The Apprentice - the female contestants spend their whole time being bitchy about the other women, clawing each others' eyes out.

It's even worse when a woman is very good looking. Extremely good looking women have friends who are either as attractive as they are, or who are men. In fact, women will, generally (I'm doing well at the sweeping generalisations here), have female friends who are of similar attractiveness to themselves. Go on, think about women you know, and think about who their best friends are - I bet they're pretty much alike in terms of attractiveness.

[Snatiramas]

She thinks and maybe you do too that she knows your game. Made I would put in a reraise with a nice catching hand. If she folds so be it. Maybe I would show the hand in this case. If it gets to the river and you caught she is going to be in a world of pain.......I have used this in the past to reasonably good effect. Afterwards it is harder to put you on a hand or style.

Now you irritate them because all of a sudden you are not the nice meek Tracey.......you are tricky Tracey that needs to be given more respect.........

I have just reread and I am not sure if this is good advice or cobblers........no I still think it is reasonable

[DaveShoelace]

Generally speaking, women will rarely pass up an opportunity to stick the knife in another woman in a competitive environment. I think this is because, as Tracey has said, women do have an advantage when dealing with men - the men just will not view a woman as a threat. This gives a lone woman an advantage, an advantage which is lessened by the presence of another woman.

This is particularly noticable on TV programmes like Big Brother or The Apprentice - the female contestants spend their whole time being bitchy about the other women, clawing each others' eyes out.

It's even worse when a woman is very good looking. Extremely good looking women have friends who are either as attractive as they are, or who are men. In fact, women will, generally (I'm doing well at the sweeping generalisations here), have female friends who are of similar attractiveness to themselves. Go on, think about women you know, and think about who their best friends are - I bet they're pretty much alike in terms of attractiveness.

Totally agree with this. I knew a girl at work who was not only the best looking person ive ever seen in real life but also one of the nicest, humblest and funniest people ive ever met. She had barely any female friends and I know a handful of girls who openly admitted they thought she was genuinley nice but didnt want to hang around with her because she was so pretty.

Another example that really sums it up, look at how the audience will boo every attractive woman as soon as she walks into the big brother house without any indication as to what she is like as a person yet. Some fat mess of a woman with the manners of a incontinent pig walks in and will get cheered because she isnt threatening.

Men dont help either though to perpetuate this, the amount of times I have bent over backwards for someone just because they are attractive is embarrasing to both me, and the human race in general.

[kinboshi]

Generally speaking, women will rarely pass up an opportunity to stick the knife in another woman in a competitive environment. I think this is because, as Tracey has said, women do have an advantage when dealing with men - the men just will not view a woman as a threat. This gives a lone woman an advantage, an advantage which is lessened by the presence of another woman.

This is particularly noticable on TV programmes like Big Brother or The Apprentice - the female contestants spend their whole time being bitchy about the other women, clawing each others' eyes out.

It's even worse when a woman is very good looking. Extremely good looking women have friends who are either as attractive as they are, or who are men. In fact, women will, generally (I'm doing well at the sweeping generalisations here), have female friends who are of similar attractiveness to themselves. Go on, think about women you know, and think about who their best friends are - I bet they're pretty much alike in terms of attractiveness.

Totally agree with this. I knew a girl at work who was not only the best looking person ive ever seen in real life but also one of the nicest, humblest and funniest people ive ever met. She had barely any female friends and I know a handful of girls who openly admitted they thought she was genuinley nice but didnt want to hang around with her because she was so pretty.

Another example that really sums it up, look at how the audience will boo every attractive woman as soon as she walks into the big brother house without any indication as to what she is like as a person yet. Some fat mess of a woman with the manners of a incontinent pig walks in and will get cheered because she isnt threatening.

Men dont help either though to perpetuate this, the amount of times I have bent over backwards for someone just because they are attractive is embarrasing to both me, and the human race in general.

It's how we're engineered.  We do all sorts of things based on how we're attracted to other people.  It even works with babies.  With their little cute faces and big eyes, it's human nature to want to look after the little blighters - and that feeling is triggered by their appearance.

We're slaves to our genes.

[EvilPie]

The amount of times I have bent over backwards for someone just because they are attractive is embarrasing to both me, and the human race in general.

I think I understand what you're saying here. I know I've lost count of the amount of times I've wanted to bend some girl over backwards just because she was attractive. 

[DaveShoelace]

The amount of times I have bent over backwards for someone just because they are attractive is embarrasing to both me, and the human race in general.

I think I understand what you're saying here. I know I've lost count of the amount of times I've wanted to bend some girl over backwards just because she was attractive. 

Had a little prop bet with myself how long it would take to get a response like that. I won.

[Dingdell]

The amount of times I have bent over backwards for someone just because they are attractive is embarrasing to both me, and the human race in general.

I think I understand what you're saying here. I know I've lost count of the amount of times I've wanted to bend some girl over backwards just because she was attractive. 

Had a little prop bet with myself how long it would take to get a response like that. I won.

Sorry about that - I held back!

[EvilPie]

I think this whole man / woman, attractive / unattractive thing is getting a little bit away from the point. (Admittedly my last post wasn't exactly constructive)

I think there's a very high possibility that she was being funny with you purely because it might give her an advantage at the poker table. She wanted to put you on tilt and it seems like she may have succeeded slightly.

She's probably of the opinion that she's never going to be best mates with you anyway so she doesn't care what your opinion of her is. All she's bothered about is winning and anything she can do to give her even the slightest advantage is worth it even if it means someone not liking her.

I was talking to a player recently who I know gets a lot of peoples backs up when he plays. He's very arrogant at the table and puts a lot of people on tilt by the way he talks to them. He said the reason he does it is because he has no friends at the poker table. It's his job and part of his job is trying to make people make bad decisions.

I personally think he's a really nice bloke but I guess I can just understand why he does what he does. Try not to let it get to you. She's probably not that bad a person but even if she is just forget about her.

She is nobody in your life. She might as well not even exist. Just play your cards as each situation dictates and you'll soon find that it gets her back up that she's unable to affect your game with a bit of speech play.

[StuartHopkin]

I think many of the posts above seem to be concentrating on the gender issue here too much. Us blokes do exactly the same to each other, everyone has their nemesis at the poker table, either because they have annoyed you or givin you a bad beat in the past.

Personally i manage to keep it under control most of the time, quite lucky really seeing as anyone in a poker branded cap or shirt intstantly annoys the crap out of me! I dont mind if their sponsored but if they got theyre Full Tit baseball cap by saving points at the $0.0000015/$0.0000030 HORSE table it just winds me up!

So far i think ive busted myself out of 5 biggish tournaments whilst trying to bust these people for no other reason than their apparel!   

No offence to anyone of course, just illustrating how different things annoy different people regardless of whether its male, female or shemale.

[kinboshi]

We did move away slightly from the general issue of players annoying us at the table, but there is definitely something to the idea of female players having animosity towards other female players.  In some cases the gender is the only reason for this animosity.

Anyway, must dig out my PokerStars top for when I play you next...