Every once in a while fish just seem to swim up in your face and say, "Here I am, come take my money." In today's game the number of truly bad players isn't nearly what it used to be but there are definitely signs to look for. Most of the time the fish can't help it, it's just how they have acted at the table since they started playing cards and no matter how many books or forum posts they read they just can't seem to shake the tells. I've noticed this more and more happening recently in one particular form so I feel like I should share some of this with you. I'm not going to be giving away the farm here but I just want to see if you guys are noticing the same thing at the tables.

Complaining how bad another player is after losing a pot. This has varying degrees. The more severe example of a fish is when you see the player complaining about a hand BvB or when someone calls their shove with a pair of 5s or lower. This type of player will then go on a 30 minute tirade after being knocked out of the tournament and go out of his way to make you feel bad about the plays you made. I just have one question to ask when people like this freak out, are you fucking stupid?

Here's the reason these people are just fish. It's one thing to get upset, hell I still get pissed about running bad or bad beats I take and sometimes I get very frustrated with the other players at the table for causing my misfortune. The difference is I never EVER take it out on the other player. If you do take things out on other players around you are wrong for a number of reasons. First off, the person put up their buy in and there isn't really a "right" or "wrong" way to play the game. Yeah sure Shoving 72o UTG first hand of a deep stack MTT is pretty bad from a logical or professional standpoint but not everyone, and certainly not most fish, are pros at this. This feeds nicely into my next point, if these people are going to be making these obvious mistakes why are you correcting them? Out of everything that's the dumbest part of this. You gain equity from identifying other player's mistakes at the table and by figuring out the best way to take advantage of them. So say you notice the fish likes to call off his stack with 44 for a 100BB pot looking for a flip. Why are you telling them how bad a play that is? TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. DON'T CORRECT HIM AND RUIN THE GAME FOR YOURSELF, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY FOR THE REST OF US.

Finally what I can't stand is just the simple lack of maturity that bad players show. Let me try to clear this up. Let's say you found a fish who calls off big chip stacks with small pairs and you have a big stack and AKo. Let's now say you start getting into a raising war with this guy and eventually get the money in and he turns over 44 having now called a 5-bet shove. The board bricks off and he wins with his pair of 4s. You know who's fault this is that you're now sitting on the rail or firing up a new MTT, yours asshole. I get it, the man can let go of a pair, but if that's the case why aren't you mixing it up with him with 77 rather than AKo. Now I'm not saying don't take flips, but when you can identify what your opponent is doing and you simply don't take advantage of it, it's your own damn fault. No one else can be blamed but you.

I guarantee you'll see this at least 5 times during a multi hour session. Whether you grind cash, MTTs, or SNGs you'll see people who make the mistake of bitching at the table. I used to hate this at the table, now I just provoke people to keep getting angry. I'd rather know who they are that way I know I can take advantage of their mistakes rather than tell them why what they are doing is wrong.