Foray Into Online Poker

After about a week of playing the PC poker game I was itching but scared at the same time to try my hand at online poker. No gambling (yet) mind you, but real people. After awhile you could figure out the "robots" on the PC game and how they kind of were programmed to play. I wanted to play with real people. I hedged on this decision for a week while I looked around at all of the Poker sites (the ones advertised on the Poker shows). I was intimidated to sign up but finally signed up for an AOL account to play their online game. No gambling on AOL so I thought it would be pretty safe to do.

The first game I played in I was terrified. I thought that they would be able to spot the "rookie" a mile away. But after playing a few hands and realizing that no one really knows how green I am I started to settle in and have fun but boy was I nervous that first game! Do I raise, call, check, fold...dadgumit which button do I push! It sure seemed quicker and more unpredictable than PC poker. These were real live people and they could "chat" with you while playing. I was pleasantly surprised how polite most players were, usually only chatting when congratulating others on a good hand. I had to learn IM shorthand quickly as I am old school and spell every word out. Phrases like n1, gc, gh ty, vnh etc... were baffling me until I figured out the acronyms.

Once, a couple of weeks into AOL poker I was on a pretty good roll catching some great hole cards and flops and started pushing players around with my "big" stack. I noticed that this one player kept "shouting" (IM in all caps) for several hands in a row. Wasn't paying much attention as he couldn't be talking to me, right...or could he be? Acronyms like FAH, AH, FU finally starting meaning something to me. Oh my, this guy is actually cussing me out because I'm knocking people out of the tournament (more on tournaments next post).

I wanted to retaliate but I did not. I avoided playing the guy heads up because I admit, I was intimidated. Didn't want the verbal assault if I were to lose. Never had someone lobbing a verbal IM assault against me before. We did eventually play heads up and my heart was beating like a drum on every bet and every turn. He ended up have the better hand and won and proceeded to berate me (lots of gloating ala poker pro Mike the Mouth) with which I just issued a polite "vnh" message to him. Kill em with kindness I thought. He eventually got moved to another table so I never ran into him again.