Nope 
It has to be said I’m taking advantage of a certain period of relaxation atm, I am very unlikely to make US OR UK nights most of the time…
I watch a lot of poker on TV. I find the chip ruffling very annoying. If I were the produces of HSP, PAD, or WSOP, I would try to filter that noise out.
When I am at a live table, it doesn’t bother me. Maybe I don;t hear because of the ambient noise, slot machines etc.
Well. septimus’ limited experience as professional gambler did not include poker, for precisely this reason.
A young e-mail friend, aspiring physicist, has taken up professional poker. He wins more in live play, but I get the impression it’s related to gereral skill rather than tells specifically. Are there “tells” on-line?
Assuming “night” means “starts at 9 PM New York” that would be 8 AM my time, but I’m a late riser. What’s the latest hour I could join the game?
We start at 10:00 PM NY Time (Eastern). That would 9 am your time. Does that help out? (where are you at?)
There are timing tells, how long it takes for an opponent to make a decision. But it’s not very reliable of course.
If the tell isn’t reliable, is it really a tell?
Not sure which definition of “reliable” you are using, the in poker, the standards are far lower than in science.
My poker buddy and I both do it, but it’s more about focus and calming nerves than distraction or anything like that. We find that the repetition can help hide a shaky hand or sweaty palms and also creates a similar focus as with heavy breathing. My buddy even does it when he plays online.
Plus it’s something to do while you wait for rockets.
It’s automatic, it’s just something to do. Maybe people who learn really fancy chip tricks are trying to impress people, but you’re sitting there for hours on end (I just pulled a 12 hour shift followed by 5 hours of sleep followed by a 19 hour shift (whee memorial day/wsop/venetian DSE action)) and you just automatically start doing little things to keep yourself mentally engaged, like absent mindedly playing with chips.
It’s loud - there’s the constant clacker of chips in a poker room, although you learn to tune it out very quickly and you don’t even notice it unless you’re trying to.
Incidentally, I don’t find the clanking of chips of a full cardroom to be annoying - quite the opposite actually. I love that sound. It means I am about to gamble my money in a game of skill, something I cannot do anywhere else in the casino, and have fun doing so. WIn or lose, I love playing poker, and the sound of clanking clay chips is part of the scene.
I was thisclose to calling you out on that, but technically, you never did win a chip from me. So, I guess you got me on a technicality.
Poker Chip tricks are nearly as commonplace as card flourishing. Give a person any hand held item that can be manipulated, and with enough down time, you will get a hobby following with it. It’s the same thing with Cards, Pens, and Bar-tending Equipment.
That being said, you need a LOT of down time. I bought quite a few decks of cards, and a few DVDs on how to do the flourishes with cards. Still can’t do it. Check out http://www.bookofcool.com/ for tons of hobbies similar to chip tricks.
Given the length of poker tournaments, the strategy needed to play them well, on the long term, and the stretch of not getting good cards, I can easily see someone moving a chip this or that way, and that evolving into “tricks”.
I’ve never touched a cigarette, but it is my WAG that perhaps a smoker needed to do something with his hands in a down-time moment, and he or she began to play with chips as well.
Down time + hand held item + seemingly no end in sight = fidgeting = chip tricks.
Me? Have we ever played in person? Hard to do any impressive chip-rattling tricks in online poker.
I’m on a pretty good run in our weekly online game; but I’ve tried playing in a casino three times and I’ve been quite soundly thrashed every time.
It’s a habitual routine that has multiple purposes.
As others have stated, it is a little boredom and a little showmanship but it has some psychological effects on the other players. Basically, by occupying the players hands, eyes, and mind it masks any other tells they might exhibit. It keeps them from fidgeting or looking at their cards and helps avoid eye contact, which can be the biggest tell.
Although they appear to be mindlessly stacking, shuffling and restacking their chips, in reality, they’re avoiding revealing any hints that they are playing this hand any differently than any other one.
No. That was my exact point. You said you never win chips, and at first I took that to mean that you never win, period, full stop. And I knew that couldn’t be right, given the weekly games.
I’m a natural fidgeter, whether or not I’m bored or nervous, so chip shuffling is pretty inevitable as soon as I sit down at the table.
I don’t do chip tricks but I do play with my chips. I also have a marble egg I use as a card protector and I spin it on its end occasionally.
That egg must be hard to crack.