I’ve written before about my pet peeves while trying to enjoy our wonderful game of poker. Today, I’m calling out the offenders of my favorite peeves and calling them pinheads. In no particular order allow me to offer up what I believe to be the five most egregious, teeth grinding rituals of rudeness and boorish behavior that are regularly perpetrated by the pinheads of poker upon all of us who aren’t pinheads. See if you agree with my list. Caution, if you do not agree, you may be a pinhead.

Seat Changers. There are certainly strategic reasons to change your seat to better position yourself relative to other players, such as a maniac. This makes sense and is reasonable. I’m talking about the constant changing of seats in the elusive hunt for that lucky chair. I was recently in a game that was two players short and with two open seats to vie for, half the table was moving constantly. It seemed these pinheads spent more time on furniture selection than playing the game. There are no lucky seats … just as there are no unlucky seats!

Calling for Setups. There is another group of pinheads who believe there must be a lucky deck versus the unlucky deck that is currently being used. What a waste of time to have to sit there as the dealer goes through the obligatory checking of the new decks, scrambling the cards and commencing with a new deal. To compound the annoyance, several players take this opportunity to get up and go for a walk and then are not present when the dealer is ready to resume the game. There are no lucky or unlucky decks!

Unlucky Dealers. Another group of pinheads believe certain dealers never deal them a good hand. As soon as the jinxed dealer sits down, they get up and refuse to play until that dealer is pushed by a new one. You know, I’m not making this stuff up. I’m starting to get annoyed just writing about these pinheads. There are no lucky or unlucky dealers!

Table Changers. As with seat changing there can be solid, strategic reasons to change tables. Knowing another table has a much softer lineup is one very good reason. However, I’ve been at the softest table in the entire cardroom, seen a player get sucked out on the river and immediately start calling for the floor man to facilitate a table change. That is just nonsense. There are no unlucky or lucky tables … evaluate the strengths of the players to determine which table should be best!

The Jerks. The jerks are pinheads who believe they know, and play, the game better than most others and berate weaker players, especially if the weaker player has had the unmitigated gall to take down a pot from the jerk. Jeez Louise, don’t tap the aquarium! It is not only rude to berate other players but why either chase them away or inspire them to become stronger players? There certainly are plenty of jerks out there!

Our goal for today is to assess our own behavior and make sure we are not guilty of any of the above pinhead antics. If any of these actions are a part of your current repertoire please take a moment to evaluate their necessity and, more importantly, to recognize how disruptive to the game and rude to your fellow players they are.

See you next “TIME.”

Tom “Time” Leonard has played poker in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and California for more than 30 years and written about the game since 1994. Contact Tom at thleonard@msn.com.