How to Hold and Smoke a Cigar? Seriously!?

I met a couple of "Pseudo" Cigar Aficionado the other day and the conversation just killed me. Its true that there are some techniques for smoking specially for experienced smoker who want to capture many characteristics of the cigar, but on how to hold the cigar? come on now!

I personally feel that if you are into cigars, then make sure you are into them for the experience and not how cool you look with one! Holding a cigar in a certain way will not make you look like an Aficionado or 'cool' in the eyes of the people surrounding you. In fact, the cigar brand, shape, size and how you smoke it is usually enough to showoff your 'experience status' in cigars (and that's for big headed smokers only!). Studies were done in the past to try to correlate a person's mood with the way they hold a cigar but thats just for entertainment purposes. (you can read about it here in Cigar Psychology). Holding a cigar in a certain way will never give off an impression among fellow cigar enthusiasts or Aficionados. They would care more about the cigar itself then how you would hold it!

With that said, please do not let anyone tell you how to "properly" hold a cigar when smoking it. To me there is never a right or wrong way, just a comfortable and natural way. As long as you respect your cigars, you would never hold them in the 'wrong' way.

Finally, I actually took a few photos of my cigar holding preferences. As I was trying to be creative and coming up with different holds, some were too silly to put up. But all kidding aside, there are many ways to hold a cigar, and I guess it depends on their gauge size your comfort grip. Lets check them out:

First we have the typical Index Finger with Thumb - Index, Middle & Ring Finger with Thumb. Usually comfortable for 42+ gauge cigars:

Then we have the Index & Middle Finger with Thumb - Index or Middle Finger with Thumb. Usually comfortable with short cigars:

Here is the controversial hold, between Index & Middle finger (like a cigarette). Usually comfortable with small gauges below 40 & cigarillos.

The following are just me being creative :)

This is actually a comfotable way to hold it, between the middle of your Index & Middle finger with the end resting on your Thumb - Index & Middle wrapped above the cigar with your Thumb & Ring Finger supporting from the bottom:

Hope you enjoyed my photo shoot. Remember respect your cigars and there is no wrong or right way, just a comfortable & natural way to hold them.

Enjoy!