Apparently, I'm a fish.

I only mention this because a player online I'll refer to as "Seth" spent five good minutes in the aftermath of a two table tournament yesterday calling me one.

Playing online in these low dollar buy-in single or double-table tournaments (or "Sit 'N Gos," abbreviated "SNGs") is often a horrifically frustrating experience. Usually you'll have one knucklehead getting hit over the head with the deck early, and three or four other idiots throwing all their chips to the middle with the most ridiculously ragged boards and hole cards, which just ends up giving Captain Lucky Draw in the three seat a four-to-one chip lead within the first orbit.

I never have understood the mentality of the stack pushers early on. They usually fall into one of a couple of categories:

"I Made A Pair!" - Middle pair with Ace kicker? That should hold up, right?

"I've Got A Draw!" - Nothing says "PUSH" like needing that nine to fill a gutshot.

"Mine's Bigger." - If you want to push pre-flop on the first hand of the tournament with Ace/Jack offsuit, be my guest. Good luck catching that Ace. Just don't get ticked when another rube with Ace/Nine suited calls and all of a sudden your kicker doesn't beat his flush.

"If I Can't Get Out To A Huge Lead Early, It Isn't Worth It." - I've seen a lot of astonishingly bad pre-flop all-ins on hand one, but I think those guys who call another push with Ten/Seven offsuit or something similarly poor are probably in this category. Forget doubling up later, if they can't play Big Stack Poker from the gun, they don't even want to play.

"I Saw Moneymaker Do This On TV!" - This attitude should, of course, be subtitled "I'm an idiot and have no idea what I'm doing." I see Joe Rogan prodding Lycra-clad hotties to eat mealworms on NBC, and you don't see me doing that at home, do you? Even if I had Lycra-clad hotties at my disposal, I could find better things to prod them to do than eating mealworms, I'm sure.

"I Bet I Can Win This Whole Tournament In Five Hands Or Less." - This guy is the rarest of the rare Push Monkeys. I firmly believe that the guy who pushes and catches on hand one, then pushes again on hand two really thinks he's going to set a Guinness Book World Record.

OK, so it's not the logic (no matter how twisted and warped) that I don't understand. It's the careless and casual approach to losing that gets me.

As a child of the late 70s/early 80s, I can remember back in the days of YMCA youth soccer where everyone got a trophy. Then, I guess the recession hit and instead of trophies we all got Certificates of Participation. I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of Child Psychologists who can quote triple-blind taste test studies that have irrefutably determined that kids shouldn't feel bad when they lose, um, I mean "don't win." No one "loses" in YMCA youth soccer.

They're wrong. All that money all those scientists spent to coddle the youth of my generation, and they had it entirely wrong. There is nothing acceptable about losing.

I hate it when I lose. Whether it's poker, cribbage, or betting $5 on the waitress' age at the diner with my friends (try that sometime, it's fun for all involved), I can't stand losing. I'm the guy on the highway who absolutely positively must be ahead of you, no matter how fast you're going. I'm the guy with smoke pouring out his ears when the eight year-old in the next Skee-Ball lane can't miss the big digit scores. I'm the guy whose first words after defeat aren't "good game" or "nice match." It's "double or nothing?"

If you're going to sit down at my table, bring your "A" game and play it like you mean it. Don't go all hippie on me, feeling good about just being able to play. In the words of New York Jets football coach Herman Edwards, "You play. To win. The game!"

I blame Jimmy Carter's economic policy for turning my generation and the generations that followed soft. "Certificate of Participation" my eye. Give me a big ostentatious trophy and let me parade it down the streets of my hometown in front of all the kids who picked dandelions instead of focusing on putting the ball in the net. If they can't take losing, don't get them in the game to begin with. I'm sure there's some commune manufacturing patchouli out there you can send your children to instead. And don't forget to tell "Rainbow" and "Moonbeam" I said "Hello."

Now, don't get me wrong, I wish there were more idiots in the world willing to give their $10 to these SNGs so guys like me have a few more bones to scrap over. But when Push Monkeys get rewarded time and time again while I might as well be getting dealt cards from a special deck made up entirely of threes and eights, I'm going to end up annoyed.

Which brings me back to yesterday's two-table SNG. Twenty players converged in the early afternoon without a Push Monkey in sight. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work, doing our best to take chunks out of guarded chip stacks at every turn of the cards. At one point, I had even typed into chat, "This is fun, thank you to all you guys for playing good poker."

I made the final table, then the final four, then played heads-up with Seth. He was playing excessively tight, folding consistently to my raises and only coming in the pot with pairs and big (or suited) Aces.

We battled back and forth for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, without substantially changing our chip counts. I had about 13k to his 7k, and I knew I wasn't going to break him into making a bad pre-flop Push Monkey call. I had to out-flop him.

The decisive hand featured a "standard" raise to three times the Big Blind from him pre-flop. I had Eight/Two offsuit. Since I had a decent chip lead, and was looking for that little edge to get his chips, I called. The flop came Queen/Eight/Four rainbow, and I check-raised him all-in.

Even had I lost that pot, I would have been in only a (roughly) 14k to 6k deficit, and the blinds weren't such that leaving me there would have been dangerous. I put him on a big or suited Ace pre-flop, and was pretty sure the only hands I had to worry about were Ace/Queen or Ace/Eight. I was willing to take my chances that I'd lose the hand, or he'd call with only overcards to my pair, or that he'd fold (as he had been to my raises consistently) and be under 5k in chips going into the next hand.

He called with Ace/King offsuit. Overcards, my best case scenario. A meaningless Ten and a beautiful Six hit the board in succession, which gave me the two-table tournament victory.

"Good game Seth," I typed in chat. "That was fun."

"You're a joke," Seth started in. "Calling raises with 82."

Of course, I'm cleaning this up a little bit. This is a family newspaper about gambling, after all.

"You suck. Nice job you fish. 82." At this point, he encouraged me to "eat" something that I actually had to look up, to which I, in retrospect, offer a hearty "No thanks."

"Way to call on a draw," I offered. "Queen/Nothing had you beat."

"Way to call on 8 high. You fish." Again, he asked me to put something in my mouth - an offer which I'll politely decline.

I wished him good luck and left the table. I guess I'm confused on this whole "fish" thing. If I get my money on the table with the best of it, how does that make me a fish? Especially next to someone who felt confident calling away his entire stack with nothing but overcards.

I might really hate it when I lose, but at bare minimum I don't complain when I kick the ball in my own net by accident.

How I wish I could have sent this guy a Certificate of Participation for his effort. Maybe that would have helped him feel better about things. Regardless, I have no shame at all in taking my big ol' trophy and parading it in front of him. I'm a terrible loser, but I certainly know how to enjoy a win when given the chance.