ct4um8

The worlds of texting and online poker playing on occasion intersect in the chat window. It's more an intersection of concepts than anything else. Beyond a few very obvious bits of shorthand, the typical texting abbreviations don't much apply in the chat window and, unless you're texting your poker buddies, the poker abbreviations don't much apply to the wider world of texting.

We've all seen the usual -- "nh", "nb", "gg", "gla" (usually preceded by several "gg"s and the word "observer").

I was watching the WPT LA Invitational the other night. At one point Miami John had just put a horrendous bad beat on a younger player. Before the next hand, Miami John looked across the table and said, "I'm glad I won the hand, but I'm sorry about the way it happened."

The young guy replied, "I'm glad you said you were happy you won the hand. I hate it when guys say they're sorry when you know they really aren't."

I'm sure we've all been on both sides of this. Having put a horrible beat on someone and wanting to express that you know you got extremely lucky, as if that will somehow make it better. Having suffered someone hitting their one-outer at the river to send you to the rails and seeing them type "sorry" in the chat, knowing it's not really true.

We need a saying for this situation that adequately expresses both joy at having won and some small token of sorrow for the other player's loss. And, just as importantly, we need a shorthand way of saying it.

It is with this in mind that I give you "ct4um8" -- crocodile tears for you, mate.

"Crocodile tears" because I just swallowed your stack, yet I'm still shedding tears "4u". And "m8" just because it sounds friendly and reminds me of Crocodile Dundee.

Please feel free to borrow ct4um8 and use it whenever it seems appropriate.