[mutiger91]

What recourse does one really have when somebody at the table who is NOT in the hand makes observations out loud about physical tells? I had this happen to me last Saturday in a $1/$2 game. I had just put a player in for his last $45 and he was contemplating a call. He did NOT notice the tell, because when it was pointed out, he insta-folded.

After the player mucked, I let me emotion get the best of me and I lashed out at the player who made the observation. She really didn't have a clue how to bet or value hands, but she was really pretty good at watching people. Anyway, likely because of my tone, she became defiant and wouldn't even acknowledge that she had influenced the hand. I had to prod the dealer just to get him to inform the player of the rules.

I'm not even sure at this point she understood the correlation between her observation and what it meant about my hand, but my opponent sure did.

The whole incident really steamed me and I was playing sub-optimal poker for about the next hour - not really concentrating. I feel like not only did the donk cost me $45 by tipping my hand, but she also got rewarded when I called one of those "I know better than to call" bets from her later on the less than pot-odds-correct chance that it would bust her off the table and get her out of my face.

I'm thinking maybe asking for a table change would have been a good idea. Any other suggestions? I'm normally pretty easy-going at the table, but this was just so over the line (from my perspective anyway) that I didn't handle it well.

Question Two: What if I am seated with this same player again? Just ignore the history? What if history repeats? We really did not get along at all that night from that point and I was tempted to share my observations of her with the table to make my point. To tell the truth, I probably would have, but it would have been too instructional for her and I wanted her to bust out and go home - which she eventually did.