The Poker Corner

By Mean Gene Bromberg
feedback@barstoolsports.com

If you play poker there inevitably comes a time when you want to test your mettle against live targets. Whether you play online or in a regular game with your buddies, it isn’t the same as walking into a casino or cardroom, buying a rack of chips, and jumping into the fray. When you sit down you want to make an impression. You want your opponents to lay protective hands over their chips. You take your seat, stack your chips, and then pull out your secret weapon—your favorite pair of sunglasses. You slip them on, give everyone a smug smile, and imagine how cool you look.

Yeah. Cool. Right. Look, if you’re playing in a run-of-the-mill low-limit poker game, please, please, DON’T wear sunglasses. Nothing says “I’m hung like a cashew” more than wearing shades in a low-limit game. Come now, this isn’t a WPT final table. You’re not up against Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey and Barry Greenstein (and if you were, wearing a welder’s mask wouldn’t save you). What exactly are you hoping to accomplish by wearing them? Before we get into that, maybe we should ask, why are you playing poker in the first place?

Everyone has their own reasons for playing poker, and you should be honest about why you’re sitting in that seat. Are you playing to have fun? Because you like a little gamble now and then? Maybe you enjoy the unique intellectual challenge poker provides. Maybe you just like winning money. Chances are it’s a combination of the aforementioned factors and God knows what else swirling around in the depths of your psyche. You could argue that Socrates was the first poker theorist when he said “Know Thyself”, and it’s true that no player can be successful if he has any delusions about his skills or motivation.

So, once you’ve completed THAT spiritual journey, let’s move to the next question—why the heck are you wearing sunglasses indoors? The automatic answer is that you don’t want anyone picking up tells on you. That’s why the pros wear shades, to hide their eyes from the piercing gazes of the sharks at the table. As the proverb says, “The eyes are the window of the soul”, and wearing sunglasses draws a discreet curtain. OK, fine. Thing is, how many players can actually read anything from looking at your eyes? Me thinks you’re giving the casual player a bit too much credit. And you’re also forgetting the rather important fact that you can be absolutely riddled with tells even if you’re playing while blindfolded. Everything you do at the table, and everything you DON’T do, can potentially give away information. If you’re serious about playing live poker you should make a careful study of Mike Caro’s “Book of Poker Tells”, which gives examples of dozens of tells (aided with some unintentionally hilarious photographs) to look for. Just don’t read this book right before you play, else you might become paralyzed with fear that you might reveal your ATM card’s PIN number by how you stack your chips.

So, unfortunately, you have a lot more to worry about tell-wise than your eyes. And while the casual player might not pick up that quick glance at your chips when you have a big pair because of sunglasses, they might notice the spastic twitching in your neck and that sudden deluge of perspiration pouring down the upper slopes of your face. So don’t think that sunglasses render your tells invulnerable to detection, unless your baby blues go into Roger Rabbit-like gyrations when you’re dealt pocket aces.

It’s also unfortunate that wearing sunglasses doesn’t help you pick up tells either. Oh, it may disguise who you’re looking at, but unless your brain is able to process the information your eyes are sending it, the glasses won’t do much good. And since you have to have your head pointed at least in the same general direction as the object under observation, a savvy foe will figure you’re possibly scoping them out. The unsavvy wouldn’t know what was up if you were looking at them through a telescope.

And unless you’re playing at a high-limit table, that’s how your opponents will mostly break down: those who have a decent grasp of the game and those, be it from ignorance or drink or temporary insanity, don’t have a friggin’ clue. You need to consider how to play against all sorts of people, but you also need to consider how they’re going to play against you. And if you’re wearing sunglasses, they might look at you a bit differently.

If you’re wearing shades because you think it makes you look like your poker heroes, players with functioning brains are going to pick up on that. They’re going to quickly stereotype you as a loose, aggressive player who likes to be in every pot and likes to bluff, because that’s the sort of player who gets most of the adulation on TV. If you DO play like that, if you fancy yourself an up-and-coming poker hotshot, you’re going to get your head caved in by the rocks. Because they’re going to call down your bluffs, they’re going to play back when you try to bully with check-raises, they’re going to check behind you when you slow-play your monsters. In poker you don’t want your play to be predictable, and if your play IS predictable, you don’t want to advertise the fact. If you’re a maniac, and that’s how you want to play, come to the table wearing a sweater vest and Hush Puppies. Throw them off the scent.

Maybe you like wearing sunglasses because they make you look cool. They make you look like a professional badass. You want to establish dominance over the pack, and since most cardrooms won’t allow you to jump on the table and urinate on the felt, you need some other way of marking your territory. A blank yet still malevolent stare across the baize is the next best way to put that joker in the 5 seat in his place.

Well, congratulations, you’ve just dramatically cut down on the action you’ll get. Because the weak players are gonna think twice about playing a pot with you, because they’re intimidated. They don’t want to look stupid in front of you. They don’t want a confrontation. And so they’ll tighten up, they won’t call your raise with queen-nine offsuit—which means that their play has just dramatically improved. Instead of them passively throwing loose calls into the pot, they’ll fold and wait for a better time to play—like when you’ve already folded. It’s a good thing for your opponents to be a little afraid of you at the table—but not so afraid they won’t mix it up when you make a bet.

These are exaggerations, of course, and they don’t hold for every situation. But you should take into account your table image, how other players see YOU, and when you’re looking at them through polarized lenses it might have an effect. There is one situation where I can understand why wearing sunglasses might be acceptable. They’re an instant disguise. Put on a cool pair of shades and suddenly you’re a different person, you’re anonymous, you’re whomever you want to be. If you spend all day sitting in a cubicle and going to the casino gives you a sensation of adventure and excitement missing from your workday life, putting on an expensive pair of sunglasses can act like a shot of adrenaline. You’re cool. You’re smooooth. You’re Superbad.

But I beseech you, don’t plop down at a poker table and spend the next six hours scowling at everyone from behind your shades while contemptuously tossing chips and insults around. Poker is a social game, so be social. Have FUN. Make sure other people are having fun. Joke with the waitresses. Toke the dealers. Be witty, flirty, a raconteur. Don’t be a dyspeptic pain in the ass. You know, when you go to a strip club, there’s always one guy sitting by himself, a phalanx of empty beer bottles arrayed before him, and he’s staring up at the stage with sad, hungry eyes? Well, he and the sunglass-wearing pseudo-hotshot are not-so-distant cousins. Leave the shades at home. Have some fun. Win the money.