They say there are no friends at the poker table, and ideally that should be the case. You should leave aside your personal entanglements and connections and feelings at the door when you sit down at the poker table, and be ready to go to war with whomever is seated with you. Simply put, you can’t win at poker if you selectively “soften” your game so to speak, if you keep putting on the brakes to save a friend or family member a few chips. If you do this at a casino you will be scorned – it’s considered bad form – and may even be accused of collusion if your familiarity and lack of gamesmanship becomes too obvious or too annoying.

Of course, home games are usually looser affairs and you often play them with family members and friends. And as well all know, far from being “soft” these games can become feverishly ruthless. The mistaken tendency at a casino game, if you’re sitting at a table with a loved one or friend, might be to play less aggressively when they are in a hand with you. But if you’re playing for any kind of stakes, and you’re sitting at a typical table, manned with its share of fish and rocks and foxes and maniacs, you’d be strongly advised to play your normal game and try to forget that you have a familiar at the table. Weakness is weakness, and the sharks at the table, their radar finely tuned, will sniff out any hedging immediately and punish you for it.

But if you’re one of those folks who simply can’t adjust their game in these instances (and a modicum of honesty is necessary here) – that is, who find that blood is thicker than water no matter what and that marriage vows trump poker etiquette – you’d be best off playing at a table where you aren’t related, married, befriended or betrothed to anyone. That’s not to say you can’t sit at a table with familiars, even friends, but be prepared to play your usual ruthless game or you will find yourself sticking a thumb in the eye of the poker gods who will punish you for doing so.

I’ll give you an illustrative example of what can happen when you forget the maxim that there are no friends at the poker table. I was playing at a 2-5 table at Fallsview with its usual eclectic mix of folks of varying poker aptitudes. Among them were a frisky and squeaky young couple from New Jersey. They had informed the table that they were in Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, something we all found highly remarkable and admirable. Anyway, the young couple, fresh from their vows and perhaps somewhat chafed from a few days and nights of connubial aerobics, loaded up the chips and sat directly across from each other, all the while making goo-goo faces and occasionally licking their lips and winking lubriciously as if reminding each other of what carnal delights awaited them, whatever happened at the game.

Well, everything was fine at first. The couple stayed away from each other and actually displayed some solid poker skills. They were both amassing nice little stacks. Then the inevitable happened. I found myself under the gun with pocket aces and I made a smallish raise, hoping someone would re-raise and then I’d get all my chips in. Well, the newlywed man, sitting in the cut-off, re-raised. His wife, sitting in the big blind, presented quite an array of expressions when she was faced with her husband’s hefty raise. She studied his face and he remained as cool and inscrutable as a cucumber. “Honey,” she said, snapping some chewing gum, “you got aces or cowboys?”

I could tell everyone at the table resented her question, for the specter of collusion would enter the picture if he answered her question in any way whatsoever; even some reflexive twitch or slackening of his facial muscles could be interpreted to reveal his holdings if he wasn’t careful. But the fellow was no fool and he remained completely statuesque while his wife fiddled with her chips. She finally threw them in, though her look of bitterness must have alarmed her young husband – I could see it around his eyes, puppy-like, solicitous. But of course she had gotten so caught up with hubby that she forgot about Emile. I shoved in all my chips and when her husband insta-called she looked like someone had goosed her. She stood up in her seat and grabbed the sides of her hair. She opened her mouth in a profound silent scream that began to worry not just the young husband, but the rest of us at the table, including the dealer who eyed the woman very closely and made a thumb gesture to the pit boss whom I saw alert security.

“What is wrong with you calling an all-in!” cried the young bride. “You’re a donkey!”

“Uh, keep it down, lady,” said the dealer, who had probably seen variations on this situation countless times.

“Don’t tell me to keep it down!” she cried. Then she cried, “Call!” and shoved in her chips.

Well, as fate would have it, wife and husband both turned over pocket kings, and perhaps this should have been a moment of some poetry, some comedy, a true measure of how made for each other they were. But when they saw my aces and realized that they were pretty much both drawing dead, I knew they felt neither the poetry nor the comedy of the moment. The woman said nothing as the the flop, the turn and the river changed nothing. The man’s eyes moistened pathetically. And as the young bride gathered up her things and departed from the table without her young husband, who seemed frozen for all intents and purposes, all of us there felt pity for him, but hoped he would chalk it up as a lesson learned.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker player and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.