One of the benefits of playing poker online versus playing live is not having to deal with the idiots that populate your typical live table. Sure, there is the chat box function but you can always ignore that, however it’s impossible to ignore the chatterbox at the end of the live table.
Different disagreeable people come in all flavors. There are the guys that try to needle their opponents to cause tilt, there are the guys that can’t stop talking because the poker table represents their only social interaction of the week, and of course there’s that other group, there just being themselves… slow-rollers.
It’s hard to slow-roll when you play online poker. The hands turn up one after another. Sure, you could take forever to call an all-in when you have the nuts, and do a virtual slow-roll, but it’s not nearly as common as the drama queens, that tease their opponents by showing one card then the other. They might act weak to bait the person who got called down to show their hand first, and then show the near nuts for a winner.
Then there is the subtle slow roll. Recently, I played in a poker tournament and got a little short with the blinds about to eat me up, I saw a suited ace. I shoved. I had a pretty good feeling my tournament was over when the tight player to my left shoved also. Oddly, he had the same amount as me.
It folded around to the big blind, who paused and then forcefully said, “Call.” I turned up my sure loser, the guy next to me shook his head and turned over a slightly bigger Ace-rag. The big blind burdened himself with the count of how much we each had. He saw our exposed hands and didn’t bother turning over his.
After a moment, and some prodding from the table, he turned over the other two aces. Clearly, he had us both dominated, and upon seeing the other two aces out there he should have probably shown us immediately how thin we were drawing. He didn’t give a speech, or draw out the turning over his hand with some theatre but he was still slow.
Fortunately, when I logged on to bwin to play some poker I didn’t have to deal with slow-rolling donkeys like him.