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Hevad Khan’s march through the WSOP Main Event in 2007 was a clinic in how to be a bad winner. Nobody would have been surprised if one of his “touchdown” dances included steps borrowed from a Michael Flatley production. This no longer flies in the WSOP (or anywhere in the civilized, poker playing, world).

Sour grapes are much more then the active ingredient in Ripple, Boonsfarm, or any other wine that is fermented in a plastic milk bottle and aged using an egg timer. Sour grapes is also what happens when somebody losses a bundle on a hand to an opponent whose cards were not worth the cardboard they were printed on.

There are some base assumptions that we all make when we go to a proper brick and mortar casino to play some serious poker. First of all,[ we assume that if anyone at the table had a dinner that included chili cheese fries, broccoli, and three dozen White Castle burgers, they have either taken some beano, or will be kind enough to take their business to the bathroom instead of turning the table...

Video Poker is pretty much a solitary game, so who would have thought that there is actually an etiquette to this activity. On the surface of it, most folks would think that the only conduct rules that someone playing video poker would have to adhere to would involve keeping their pants on. Apparently there are rules that involve someone being a potential disruption.

Buffalo chicken is a wonderful thing, especially the variety that mixes Habanero chilies into their sauce. While it is difficult to categorize a food that makes you want to point the business end of a fire hose into your mouth and do what feels right as “wonderful”, somehow the whole thing works. This is why people around the foody world are constantly in search of ways to make food hotter and spicier. This probably won’t end until there is a fatality on the set of the “Iron Chef.” While this particularly hot and messy food is good in the stomach, nobody wants to deal with it all over their playing cards.

There are all sorts of ways of making yourself unwelcome at a poker table. Boycotting showers is always one of the fastest ways to become about as welcome as head lice. Being drunk and verbally abusive is also another avenue to being at the bottom of the popularity depth chart. Why is this sort of thing important? Because poker is a social act that requires the player to have interactions with a lot of other people. So when you decide to go off the Ms. Manners reservation and accuse somebody of cheating, you better have the facts on your side.

A lot of people choose to bring iPods to the poker table. Unfortunately a lot of these people also like bands like SlipKnot and others for whom power chords are a religion. This means that unless you are trying to say hello through a Marshall stack, chances are you are not going to be heard past their earbuds. While it is rude enough to tune the world out, it gets worse when these players try to speak, and talk as though they are trying to shout at some long dead ancestors.

There are some less obvious behaviors that a lot of folks at the poker table have yet to figure out are offensive. For example, if you have convinced everyone in the hand to fold, leaving you the winner before a showdown, and you want the last guy to give up to see what hand beat him, you cannot simply just pull him aside and show off the winning hand. This is horribly impolite and actually against the rules of poker.

I have been to a number of game nights where a Hellmuthesque tantrum can lead to everything from expulsion from the table all the way up to, and including, a savage beating. While punching somebody in the floating rib because they were throwing a fit over a bad beat is probably not the most civilized response, at least the person doing the punching can claim they were provoked.

Most of us are conditioned to get places on time; at least those of use with naturally occurring testosterone and an affection for the Three Stooges. Women seem to live in a time zone where the clock conforms to really cute shoes and how long it takes to put together an outfit around them. This means that when the starting time for a tournament draws near, the more punctually oriented of us get a tight little knot in our stomach and try to be in our seats when the starting bell sounds. This is not necessary.