Ship It, Fish!

Something lately about poker chatter annoys me. I've worked hard in my game to let absolutely nothing at the table annoy me. I used to get annoyed at rule infractions, people calling plain-old “trips” a “set” and other such things that are pointless that should never impact one's emotional state. Sometimes I get overly annoyed at the way the club is running a table, but I at least have the good sense to quit the game rather than keep playing when annoyed. Ranting here is a way to vent it without putting it into the table. So, here's one of those rants.

The term “cooler” is just being abused all over the place. In other words, “cooler” is the new “nice hand, sir”. People lose money and then like to argue that there was no way they couldn't have gotten away from the situation where they lost.

Since I have a few readers who aren't assimilated deep into poker lingo, I should explain what the term “cooler” means traditionally. (I suppose this explanation will offend my friend, a lexicographer who works for the Oxford American Dictionary, but someday, he and I will actually get to work on a real dictionary of poker.) For the moment, I suppose I should refer to the mediocre (at best) dictionary we have, which is Wiesenberg's Official Dictionary of Poker. He defines cooler, and the original term it's derived from, as follows:

cold deck

(n) — A deck, presumably with preset hands in it (usually with several good hands, the best of which will go to the dealer or his confederate), surreptitiously substituted by a cheat for the deck he is supposed to be dealing. So called because, after cards are dealt for awhile, they warm a bit to the touch, while a cold deck actually feels cool. To bring in a cold deck, the thief must perform a switch. A cold deck is also known as a cooler.

A literal “cold deck” was something you actually had to fear in the old days. During the riverboat era of poker in the 1800s, for example, poker was primarily a game of “cold decks” to trick tourists. These days, encountering a crooked dealer working with a player is rare indeed, and the terms are generally used figuratively rather than literally — for situations that come up where one player was doomed to lose the maximum to another.

And, like anything in poker, people latch onto the term as way to excuse their own bad play. Most poker players will jump through hoops to find a way to blame something or someone else for mistakes they've made. The figurative use of the word “cooler” is just that — a way to say, What else could I have done? when there often could be something else done.

For example, I've heard people call it a cooler when their out-of-position opponent flops a set when they have aces and bets into them. I've heard people say having K-Q on a K-Q-T board is a cooler when their opponent has KK, QQ, TT, or AJ. I've heard people say when they have the King high flush against the Ace high flush, it's a cooler. These situations are not coolers. They are hands you can get away from if you play them correctly!

Heck, even the would-be classic HE cooler — AA vs. KK preflop — isn't really one when the money is deep. When your opponent puts in the fourth raise and you have KK, what else does he have? Is he really doing that with QQ or AK? It's pretty hard for him to have exactly the other two kings, after all.

The proverbial coolers are situations that you actually can't get away from no matter what you do. Before you go running off saying it's a cooler, take a close look at your play, ask a better player than you, and try to figure out if you could have gotten away, or at least played it slightly differently to minimize your losses.

( Finally, though, for those of you who are guilty of abusing the term, don't feel too bad, as there are pros that do it too. (Examples given, but they are spoilers for some GSN's High Stakes Poker Episodes.) )

Anyway, think twice or three times before you go calling something a cooler. It probably isn't one most of the time.

Here endeth my rant; hopefully this is enough to get it out of my system and stop me from ever thinking of it again. Of course, my goal is for my opponents to think it's a cooler every single time I beat them, so I will try hard not to point out what is and isn't a cooler at the table.