A couple things

Two topics for today. Since the first deals with narcissism and one of my favorite topics -- me -- let's start with that.

I was reading someone else's poker blog recently and came upon an amazing bit of arrogance and condescension that I'm pretty sure was not intended in jest. Even knowing the individual involved has a very high opinion of his or her own poker skills, I was surprised to see such narcissistic thoughts actually written down for all the world to read.

I've always been one to lean toward self-deprecation, though usually also have a fair sense of where my talents and performance lie in the overall scheme of things.

A clever way to get where I intended to go with this is eluding me, so let me cut to the chase. I've played literally hundreds of thousands of hands, hundreds of tournaments, spent hundreds of hours playing live short-handed games with some pretty decent players (and a few not so decent players). I've seriously studied the game for three or four years now. When I say something about my skills being several levels above $0.01/$0.02 NL I hope it's taken as an honest evaluation and not arrogant bragging. I would hate to come off sounding like the blogger I mentioned above. And, no, I'm not naming names, so don't bother asking.

The other topic for today is rude behavior at the tables. I suppose it's a bit of a pet peeve, but it drives me crazy when someone is consistently late in taking action when it's their turn. We all occasionally step away or get distracted and time out when it's our action. I'm not talking about taking 15 seconds to fold pre-flop once an hour. I'm talking about when you look at the chat window and see nothing but "so-and-so has 15 seconds to act".

There was a player at my table for a fortunately brief period of time last night who was like this. I've seen him before and knew what to expect as soon as he sat down. Last night, though, I decided to check if he was simply not paying attention or was playing too many tables. A quick search showed him sitting at ten different tables. Ten.

I know there are players who can actually handle playing ten tables at once. If you have tables consistently beeping at you because you have just a few seconds left before your action times out, you aren't one of these players.

I also have to question why anyone would want to play ten tables of $0.01/$0.02 NL. I've lately been inclined to try playing two or three tables just to keep boredom from setting in while waiting for others to act. But I fail to see any reason to play ten tables at this level.

If you're interested in making money, $0.01/$0.02 isn't the place.

Honing your skills against players at this level is a bit like using room temperature butter to sharpen a knife. Yes, everybody has to start somewhere, and there is something for beginners to learn at this level, but playing ten tables at once is not a typical mark of a beginner.

So what I see it coming down to is a rather futile activity that accomplishes little other than to be rude to other players, consistently slowing their game down because you think you're being cool by playing so many tables.

The poker sites should monitor this activity and not allow additional tables to be opened if you are consistently delaying play at the tables you're already playing.

On a more mundane note, The Quest did not go well last night. I made a stupid move against a player who had time and again demonstrated his inability to fold. At least this time it was me doing the pushing and not me stupidly responding to a push. After moving to another table the cards dried up so I didn't get much of a chance to make up what my stupidity had lost.

One thing I've learned about play at this level is that many of the players can not be bluffed out of a hand. If they have as little as an overcard, many of them will call any bet. Bluffing, unless you have a good read on the players involved, is usually just a way to lose a lot of chips. If you're not getting the cards, the best thing is to take the small lumps and wait out the cards. Better to lose a quarter of your buy-in to blinds and cheap false starts than to lose several buy-ins on bluffs against the unbluffable.