Well, since it seems like debating about sunglasses in poker is all the rage and I rarely pass on my chance to toss in my 2 cents on just about anything, I figure I will give an online poker player’s point of view. What strikes me as funny about the whole sunglasses debate is that it seems quite obvious that those who read people really well are going to be inclined to want sunglasses gone, and those who are more afraid that they are being read more often than they are reading someone else, want to keep their shades.
Being around poker and poker players for the last half decade now, one thing has become quite obvious. Poker players want what is best for themselves. Whether they are on the right side of the morality of the argument or not, they want what is best for themselves. So when you hear a poker player argue something one way or another, understand that they are usually like attorneys in that they will just argue which ever way that pays the bills. I mean for Christ sakes, our entire profession is about getting people to do things that are not in their best interests. We want them to go all in when we have AA so they can lose money. We want them to go on tilt so they will make stupid plays and lose their money. I could go on and on until I ran out of space in my blog with things us poker players try and get people to do that is solely in our own best interests. The bottom line is that poker players just argue pocketbook, period end of sentence.
I think to compare wearing sunglasses at the tables to some of the other banned items/substances in other sports is a bit of a stretch. I mean I get what people are saying and I do think that in poker we should start to look at the big poker events (and the rules of these events) the same way a major professional sporting organization would, but I just don’t think wearing shades at the table is at all like taking a banned HGH substance or greasing your driver so the ball goes further. People who argue that reading people is a fundamental part of poker are the same as people who think marriage between a man and a woman (and not a man and another man or a woman and another woman) is a fundamental part of marriage. And what I mean by that is that to some people, marriage between a man and a woman is a fundamental part of marriage. And they are perfectly entitled to that opinion. But if you ask a gay person, they would say that all that matters is if two people love each other and want to commit to each other. In their mind the only fundamental aspect of marriage is love and commitment.
To a guy like Daniel Negreanu, reading people is a fundamental part of poker and therefore he doesn’t want people to be allowed to wear shades at the felt. Shoot, I don’t blame him for feeling that way, because he is such a damn good reader of people. I am a poker player too after all, so I’d argue the same way if I were him. But to me, I don’t care about trying to read people. I am not good at it and I would prefer to let the (hopefully) fundamentally solid strategy that I have developed for a given situation dictate the action, not whether my left nostril flared. To me, having a read on someone allows someone who has merely picked up on a physical tell use that to trump actual poker skill. So if you ask me, I wish everyone had shades and no one said a word.
In sports, there are things that are fundamental to the game. Putting a ball in a basket is a non negotiable rule in basketball. In golf, it is a fundamental aspect of the game that you put the ball in the hole. But as my great friend Casey Martin proved in the United States Supreme Court, walking is NOT fundamental to the game of golf. I’m sorry, but the ability to see a man or woman’s face is NOT fundamental to the game of poker. To some it may seem like it should be, but it simply isn’t. If it was, my sponsor, Poker Stars, would have to change their name to something else because they would not be allowed to call the games they spread “poker” because they would not be allowing something that is fundamental to the game to take place. Betting, folding, etc. is a fundamental part of poker, seeing a person’s face is not. And for those reasons, I think the shades are here to stay.