[private joker]

This thread rules. It's awesome to hear all the lines that have been fed to me are Standard for everybody.

Yes, I get the "if I give you $xx can you double it?"
Yes, I get the "you made $2,000? But how much did you lose?"

Sometimes I get this:

"You play poker? Are you good? I play roulette sometimes. I'm pretty good, I think. I have a system. How much did you win the last time you played poker? Oh yeah? The last time I played roulette I won $200!"

Until poker is separated from "gambling," you'll never be able to avoid these questions. I used to try saying to people:

"With gambling, you have to get lucky to win. With poker (if you're good), you have to get unlucky to lose."

This just confuses them even more.

But even the people who understand baffle me. There are two guys at work who play. One of them goes down to the Bike to play a lot of tourneys, and doesn't do well. He won one, like a year and a half ago, and has used it to roll all the buyins he's busted since. He won't play online because "you can't read people; they can have anything." We were in Vegas the same time and I sweated him in a WSOP satellite. he donked off all his chips with 88 on a board with two Broadway cards against a tight player. It was ugly.

The other guy won't play online because "the software is fixed. They reward good laydowns by letting you suckout on the river the next big pot. And you can't play in those loose games because people always chase and get there on the river."

These are two guys who think they understand the game. So forget talking to people who don't...

Then you get the "Oh! I want to learn, it looks fun! Can you teach me?"