I’ve only played a game of poker once in my life years ago, but I watch “High Stakes Poker” and “Poker After Dark” on a regular basis. The players constantly are rattling their chips. It’s pretty annoying.
So my question to you. Do you and/or your fellow players play with your chips during games? The one time I played none of us did.
I think you have to eventually. All that high stakes stuff shown on TV is edited down to only show important hands. In reality the game goes on for hours and hours, so the players will come up with anything to stave off boredom if they are throwing back hand after hand of junk.
Yeah, sitting at a poker table for hours on end it’s hard not to start fidgeting.
I’ve never won enough chips to find out.
Playing with the chips (rattling, cascading, making varying stacks or flipping them around in your hand while you consider a play) is one of my favorite parts of playing poker. I always insist on using the (more) expensive heavy chips instead of the cheap plastic ones precisely because they’re so fun to play with!
If I haven’t got many chips, I rattle my popcorn. Anything to get under my opponent’s skin.
Yes, I do. I also like to do simple card tricks and I also like those Chinese exercise balls that you roll around in your hand while ringing. I also do the pencil-twirl thing and roll coins/chips across my knuckles. A classmate also taught me a martial arts exercise where you tap parts of your hands on a table as fast as you can, and I also type up to 120 wpm.
In a way, I suppose it’s showing off. But on the other hand, it’s a matter of perspective. To someone like you, who probably does none of the above, it’s an annoying habit. To me, not doing anything with my hands is odd.
Yes! The heavy clay chips, though pricey, are pretty awesome.
Nobody, some players (myself included) tend to use it as a distraction to the other players. Most regular players can tune it right out, but if there is someone new at the table, or new to the game altogether, it’s kind of a way to weed out the weak zebra, so to speak. There are ALL kinds of little things poker players do to try to rattle their opponents. Chip-fidgeting is a pretty universal choice, though.
Yes.
I think it’s part boredom, part showing off, part intimidation(I’ve been playing so long I can do THIS!). In a casino cardroom some of the tricks and flourishes are pretty impressive. There are even separate competitions just for chip tricks. Bored gamblers will bet on anything!
Yes. Both at the poker and the blackjack table.
This is my only OCD moment, too: I have little rituals that I do when I win and when I lose with the chips, that I won’t describe in detail except to say that Adrian Monk would understand.
Moved MPSIMS --> The Game Room.
In a real casino setting, you’re using proper clay chips on a felt table with a good deal of ambient noise, so you don’t notice the sounds of chip shuffling too much (unless you decided to pay attention to it.) In a small home game on a hard surface with metal-insert plastic chips, it can get pretty loud and annoying. (This is why I always provide nice chips and a felt surface for my home games. Well, the felt helps with handling the cards, too…)
Those are pretty good explanations. Somehow on the poker shows I don’t think it would make sense for anyone to do it to try and throw their opponents off since they’re all professionals. But from what you guys said boredom, and probably habit, must be why their doing it.
Constantly re-stacking chips doesn’t bother me because it’s quiet. But constantly picking up some chips and dropping them on each other is maddening. Guess if I ever start playing I’ll have to get over it.
Entirely about boredom in my view.
Mind you I am only a winning poker player online; in real life any muppet can read me. So I rarely play bricks and mortar so I’m not too hip to this.
This didn’t used to be the case. 15 years ago I was in a job that required a poker face, and it was second nature to take that to poker, but since then I’ve basically gone the other way and let out repressed expression… I’m like a 5 year old, honestly!
I actually keep four poker chips on my desk beside my laptop. Often when I am browsing/killing time, not even playing online poker, I will have the chips shuffling away in one of my hands.
Its just a boredom, fidgety thing.
Any interest in a SDMB poker tournament btw?
Edit: I’m a complete fuckwit, thinking of Adrian Mole, removed a bit
It’s not boredom. It’s not showing off.
It’s this: first these players tried shuffling a couple of chips and got it down; then more; then they reached their max. Then at some point it became a habit, like breathing. They do it when they’re nervous. They do it when they’re calm. They do it when they’re laughing. They do it when they’re angry. Walk into a big tournament and it sounds like a thousand terra cotta crickets.
It’s the music of poker.
It seems to me that a subconscious bored mannerism like this would be fertile ground for tells to grow in. If you’re going to so much trouble to keep a poker face, don’t you want to keep poker fingers, too?
You’re aware that there’s a weekly game on Thursday nights, and that we use the results to declare a champion each quarter?