This could be the greatest scare tactic I've ever seen in poker, and just figured I'd share it as a possible tactic... I was in AC at a 1/2 NL game at the Taj a couple months ago, and there was a player there who didn't seem like the best player in the world, but pretty good... not talkative or anthing but friendly... About an hour into the session, he bets pretty sizably (about $30), some old dude raises him all-in, about another $150, and the guy just looks him in the eye, calmly says "Good luck", and flips a boat... He did the same thing to another guy about a half hour later, flipped a nut flush, and quickly counted his chips up... I was sitting next to the guy, and was talking to him friendly enough, and saw him over the next 4 hours or so do it another 3 or 4 times... The guy's hands that he was putting all-in would shake a little, and I'm sure their butthole would tighten like a vice...Every time he did it, they threw their cards away like they had Ebola... It was pretty funny because he told me that most of those times, he was on a stone cold bluff... He didn't do it to me, but it was VERY intimidating ...

What made me think of this is that last night on GC, a guy at the 1/2 table I was sitting at did almost the exact same thing... He would put someone in, and type "gl" before smoking them... Suffice it to say, I didn't play a big hand against him all night... I'm sure he was doing the same as the AC guy (ie bluffing), but I sure as hell wasn't gonna call and find out after seeing him dismantle 2 people...

I've only ever seen these 2 people do that, but wanted to know if there was a problem (poker ettiquete (sp)) with what they were doing. The first 2 times the AC guy did it was after they had already called, but before he flipped. After that, though, he would do it before they called, to make them fold... He wouldn't tell anyone his cards or anything, so I don't think he was breaking any "rules", but figured I would ask... Except for the fact that the guys he did it to in AC looked like they wanted to break his neck, it seemed like an extremely effective bluffing tool once you successfully pull it off a couple times...

Any thoughts...
MVP

I kinda figured that... The old guy looked a little too much like Uncle Junior from the Sopranos for me to screw him...