There are very few things that have less value then the practice of complaining or playing irrelevant revisionist history games. If one of my ex girlfriends wound up winning an Oscar for “best actress”, or better yet, “best scene in a clothing optional situation”, would it really do me any good to sit around the living room, telling everyone I know that I could be dating her right now if not for the fact I couldn’t live with her habit of clipping her toenails in bed? Of course not. Neither would it do me any good to constantly tell the story about how I would be a millionaire right now if not for the fact that I forgot to play my regular lotto number on the week when they actually came up. These tales of what could have been will do nothing but annoy the people around me, so why do folks around the poker table seem to think we want to hear about how many hands they would have won had they not thrown away their hole cards?
One person in particular that I know threw away an unsuited 2-3. The flop came up 3-2-3. For the next hour we had to hear about those cards and how if he had not folded, he would have driven the pot up so high that we would have to sign over our cars to him to pay the debt. Ironically his fold was the proper play. Unless he was Nostradamus or the The Amazing Criswell, there was no way he could have predicted flopping a full house. This fact seems to have completely missed his brain, and splattered on the wall behind him, because he just would not shut up about what could have been.
In a social game like poker, it is important to respect those around you, and how much you may be annoying them. Do not express your disappointment in how a hand worked out by banging on about how much money you could have taken from the rest of the table. The only thing that matters in the end is how much money you really did get off of everyone else. People should remember to leave their brushes with greatness in the past, and stop talking about the money they didn’t win. It makes the evening so much more pleasant.
