by Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire - @taopauly
 

by Barbara Connors
 
If ever a concept appeared to be a perfect fit for the game of poker, it’s schadenfreude. A German word now commonly used in English, there’s no precise translation but essentially it refers to feeling pleasure from the misfortune of others. Schadenfreude is the opposite of compassion—instead of experiencing pity and a desire to help when we witness a fellow human in distress, we feel a secret (or not-so-secret) sense of delight.

“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.”
 
Black Friday changed the way a lot of us play poker.
 
I enjoy and give full credit to online poker: it is an excellent training-ground—the place to learn the game and begin to understand betting patterns, where you can use tools like PokerEdge, Sharkscope, and Hold’em Manager, not to mention a handy little sheet of paper with hand rankings and percentages you can post next to your monitor.
 
But from the start of my poker career I have maintained that the authentic poker player is the live cash game player.
 

Back in poker’s Pleistocene age, before television and the internet changed things forever, poker meant cash games. But when poker and television discovered each other, it was love at first sight. They were made for each other. Tournaments provide the viewing audience with winners and losers, heroes and villains, and the same sense of drama found in all sorts of sporting events.

“If you pay attention to the wrong things, the very best you can hope for is to get lucky.”—Lou Krieger and Richard Harroch, Poker for Dummies

How did you first learn to play poker? How do people generally learn to play games?

If you are like most of us, somewhere between the ages of five and twenty-five, someone—a parent perhaps or a sibling or friend—taught you the rules and how to play the game. The same applies to any game—poker, chess, Monopoly, tic-tac-toe, you name it.

In Act I of George Bernard Shaw's famous play Caesar and Cleopatra, the two main characters meet for the first time at the foot of the Sphinx. Cleopatra, still very young and inexperienced, does not realize who Caesar is and confides to him her terror that the invading Romans are barbarians who "are coming to eat us all." Without revealing his identity, Caesar tells Cleopatra that if she behaves like a grown woman and a queen, then the Romans will not harm her, but if she continues to act like a silly child, she will be eaten.

Recall my column, Legal? Immoral? or Just Tricky? In the March 30 issue, Jim called Jill on the river. Jill announced she had a straight. Jim mucked his hand. Another player asked to see Jill's hand. Guess what. She did not have a straight! Jim would have won the pot had he shown his hand.

In response, Robert, an attorney in Cincinnati, Ohio shares his two key poker rules, commenting: "Your student might know strategy and odds, but it's also important that he know the rules."

You've sat in traffic for what seems like an eternity. What is supposed to be a fast- moving freeway has been converted into a parking lot, and you've held the brake pedal for so long that your foot is starting to pain you. Finally, you see flashing lights of police cars and tow trucks ahead of you.

Tom, a reader from Florida, e-mailed the following question:

Is anything that is legal in poker, all right to do? Or are certain things legal, but unethical or in poor etiquette, and should be avoided?

This got me thinking about some past situations I found myself in. Let's look at a few of them.

1. Anything that is legal is all right to do. Agree or disagree?

2. Playing an online ultra turbo tournament, you take all your time each hand before folding, and play fewer hands than other tables. As a result, your blind comes around more slowly.