You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Tweet of the Week?
Tikay10
Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 173,736
Sky Poker, & even me, get quite a few Tweets.
Some are interesting, some are just bad beats, disguised or otherwise, “guess what the idiot called with?”, (which is kinda lol, because it implies it is not our fault we lost!), many are ironic or sarcy, but lots of them are really rather interesting.
This one came in to the TV Show’s hashtag last night though, & it really got me thinking…..
“…..I only play online - I am colour blind - cannot tell chips apart. Are there any live games with numbers on chips?....”
What a great question!
The short answer is “yes”, almost every Live Venue has numbers on the chips to tell us what denom they are.
The long answer is even more interesting though…….
Comments
What is “colour blindness”?
What it says, really, though it has quite a few oddities & specifics.
If you are colour blind, it is not curable, it is permanent. Sad, but true.
Strangely, it affects a lot more men than women – 7% of all males, but less than 1% of females. How very odd.
It comes in various forms, too, lots of variables.
The most common is the inability to distinguish between red & green. This one is called “deuteranopia”.
Memorise that, in case I ask questions later.
Live Poker, will it stop us playing it? No, absolutely not.
Almost all poker chips these days have the denom on them (in Licensed Venues, anyway, as they have a legal obligation not to discriminate against such things as colour blindness).
And we can always ask what the last action was - “how much was the raise, or call?”
If it is No-Limit, sadly, we are NOT permitted to ask the Dealer how much is in the pot, so in that respect, yes, we need to concentrate a little harder, ‘tis true. Well actually, in case some pedant gets on my case, we CAN ask what is in the Pot, but as the Rules go, the Dealer should not tell you. Dem’s da Rules.
One downside here is that poker chips tend to be in pastel, rather than primary colours, & I assume that does not help much. “Common-sense” rules in most cases too.
If we explain our problem, invariably someone will assist. Poker players as a collective love to help others. No, they do!
Successful poker players who are colour-blind?
Well I hope he does not mind me mentioning it, but as he is our top poker bloke chappie here, I can tell you that Thewy is colour blind, & he has the deuteranopia version, can’t tell red from green sorta thing.
So he copes somehow, not sure how, because whenever I see his chips, they are all in higgly-piggly piles, bit like a barbers pole.
In fact, incoming bad-beat story here. (The gist of this is true, but I may have some details round my neck).
A good few years back, Thewy was playing the WSOP Main ($10,000 Entry fee) & as was the custom at the time, I had purchased 10% of his action. I mean, he’s bound to cash in it eventually, surely? Well that was the thinking.
I was there, too, not playing the Main – that pleasure still awaits – but working for someone, I forget who now.
I kept wandering past his table, all innocent-like, to see how “my man” (& my money) was getting along. He was fine, north of average, excellent.
And then, suddenly, he was in the Press Room, with a curly lip.
I asked him what happened – you have to, even though you don’t want to know & he told me the most peculiar story. The exact details evade me, but it was something like this.
He is in “The Big Blind”, folded to the SB who pops it up, trying to nick the blinds no doubt. Thewy has 3-3, & re-pops, as you do.
Trouble is, he threw in the wrong colour – here’s the colour blindness coming in to play - & threw in green 5k’s, instead of red 500’s. Whoops.
Thewy momentarily gasps, then tries to conceal his surprise, sort of “yes, of COURSE I meant to do that”.
Small Blind geezer then re-raises! As you do when you KNOW someone has accidentally overbet.
Quite legit, perfectly standard, this is the pokerz, not a Sunday afternoon whist drive down the Church hall.
This is where it all went a bit pete tong.
Thewy thinks the geezer has done that because of the mistake with the colours, taking advantage of him. And he don’t like that much. So, in such times, a good player sticks it right in the villains eye. (Metaphorical, hold the complaints please). And he did.
I mean, he had 30,000 chips, at 300-600 or whatever, so he is playing deep enough to pull these moves.
Anyway, the geezer snaps Thewy, holding 9-9. The 8-8-9 flop was a thing of beauty for the other chap.
Even Thewy, deuteranopioa & all, could see that in fact.
So, Mr Tweeter with colour blindness, worry not, Live Poker will be just fine for you. As long as you don’t stack your chips higgley piggley, as Thewy does.
Paul Newman wanted to be a pilot for the Navy. It was during the flight physical that he discovered he was colour blind. Instead, Newman trained to be a radioman and a gunner and, obviously, eventually went on to become an actor.
Meat Loaf, on the other hand, tried to fail his Army physical by listing his numerous ailments: he was colour blind, 68 pounds overweight, had a trick shoulder and was prone to concussions. He was drafted anyway.
Jack Nicklaus. As Sports Illustrated puts it, dude “couldn’t tell you a green number from a red on a leader board if the winner’s check depended on it.”
Bing Crosby. Bing’s loud clothing was fodder for many jokes back in the day – Bob Hope especially relished zinging him for his bad taste. But it’s no wonder that Bing picked out such tacky pieces – he was, quite literally, colour blind. “He will think something is a beautiful blue,” his wife once explained, “and it will turn out to be a bilious green.”
The chap who was 2 to my left was a very nice guy and didnt actually mind me asking informed me that he was colour blind and he really dodnt know which chip was what. This was very clear by his stack. A lad from the North West of England who was sitting between us done one of the nicest things ive ever seen at a poker table. He offered and asked the dealer if it was ok to split the chaps chips into colours with the top chip showing the value face up.
Everyone said this was ok and it made a massive differance for the chap. Such is human nature.
Three things (I think) are interesting about colour blindness:
1) It is amazing how many people are colour blind to some degree - and may never know it.
2) The first question that everyone asks is "how do you manage with traffic lights". (The answer is simple - the one at the top is red!!)
3) One of the worst things about being colourblind is choosing / matching clothes. When I travel I can only travel with one colour type (all blues / all browns etc). I never buy clothes - after buying a pair of trousers when I was 16 that I thought were a nice shade of blue - turned out they were bright purple!
Back to poker - although people are always helpful I have stopped playing live. I mostly played in US - and at least at the places I played - I found the chips almost never had values on them - only colour coded. This means that not only can I not sort my chips out but I have no idea how much I have. In addition I have to ask what each bet is.
Yes - people are very helpful - but after a while it gets too embarassing.
Anyway - better I stay with online - I have too many tells when I play live!!
Keep up the great work - will see you online.
hackin
PS - any suggestion son playing timed tournaments - I always seem to lose out very near the end...
How can you be sure that the colour blue you see is the same as the colour blue I see?
Pretty hard to prove.