You wouldn’t believe that a cut-throat world such as online poker – where everyone is anonymous and out to receive yet another’s money – has such a thing resembling unwritten rules or rules. At lower bets, this is undoubtedly true.
Players come and go, scarcely Gclub limiting one another again, and don’t have any incentive to be polite or help one another out. As the stakes get higher, unwritten rules and agreements between players are trivial, and no one more-so than the high bets heads up tables.
At higher bets, players might also be loosely divided into just two categories. The regulars (regs), that often play for a living and also play with a sound, mathematically sound game. The other group are the fish, who are recreational players, usually simply playing for fun and delight, together with lots of holes and leaks inside their match.
On any site, at the higher bets heads tables up, you’ll usually see one player sitting at a table by himself. You may bet your bottom dollar that really is a reg waiting in anticipation of a bass drifting into ease him of the money. Regs will avoid one another even though they believe they’ve got an advantage over each other. That is because any borders which regs have over eachother will likely be small, and matches usually lead in only passing money forth and back.
As there are only a specific number of heads-up tables on a website, some regs will sit at every table, refusing to play other regs. This results in him carrying up every table and never allowing any other regs to have a match. If this happens, some other regs will”block” his tables by sitting with him refusing to play. This prevents both players out of obtaining a match, but there needs to be a penalty for just about any player who thinks they can monopolise all vacant tables awaiting a bass.
Most regs work out some agreement, but where they all sit at some tables each and take their opportunities who the fish sit . Any reg thought to be taking a lot more than their share will most likely end up getting all their tables obstructed.
Other unwritten rules are”do not tap on the aquarium” – ie, don’t scare the fish. Don’t berate a fish because of his lousy play and don’t mistreat them at the chat box. All that really does is humiliate them leaving or improving their match, which divides the regs bottom line. Simply tell him he’s unlucky and let him let steam off in the chatbox when he wants to.
Ring games (6 chair or 9 chair tables) possess their own unwritten rules, but should you ever start a poker site and watch 20 high bets headsup tables with only 1 player sitting, that is the reason.