Many players seem to think that shades are almost compulsory at a poker table, but Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson are two experienced pros who think they should be outright banned.


There are three main reasons why people wear shades at a poker table:

1. They want to hide their eyes for fear of giving tells.
2. They want to be able to watch other players without them noticing.
3. They think it's cool.

None of those reasons are good enough for Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson who would rather have shades banned altogether.

Shades are not allowed in the upcoming PokerStars Big Game tv show, and Daniel applauds the decision on his blog: "I swear every TV producer should ban sunglasses entirely from any televised event. They are so bad for poker on so many levels. Poker wouldn't be on TV if everyone wore hoodies and sunglasses to hide their eyes."

Doyle Brunson is on the same plane with Daniel Negreanu and mentions another reason, also hinted by Negreanu: "I’ve been campaigning against allowing (shades) for 20 years. I didn’t know it for years but is a fact that any marks on cards can be seen better with dark glasses. I agree that 99% of the time the person wearing them is innocent of any wrongdoing, but the tournament directors should take control of the danger. Even though lots of the players don’t like it, the human element of seeing your opponent should be a part of poker," Doyle says on his blog.

The topic of shades originally came up on High Stakes Poker when Tom "durrrr" Dwan joked that "guys like Russ Hamilton" [the alleged UltimateBet cheater] would oppose banning them.