A whistle???

Just when you think you've seen it all....

At the Hilton today, a stupid argument broke out between two players. I wasn't involved in the hand, but here's what happened. After the river card was dealt, Player A went all-in, and pushed all his stacks of chips forward. Player B said, "I call," without pushing his chips forward.

Now, this is perfectly acceptable. It's how I usually do it, too. It's time-saving to just find out who won, and then settle up who owes whom, and how much. The guy who called even turned over his cards first as he announced his call, though he had every right to wait and see his opponent's hole cards first.

Player A hears the announcement of the call and sees B's cards. He knows he's beat. Player A is an older Asian guy who is usually silent, but every once in a while he flies off the handle about something--and it's always something incredibly trivial. When he does, he yells as loud as anybody in a poker room ever gets, and it's essentially impossible to understand what he's saying, because of a thick accent, and because his voice jumps way up into the little-girl-soprano register when he's upset.

That's what happened in this instance. He was mad because B didn't push his chips forward. By the rules, this makes no difference whatsoever, as B calmly tried to point out to him, once the shouting started. B said, with complete sincerity and plausibility, "If I had lost, I'd pay up." Of course he would--the casino would see to that, even if he refused (something I've never seen happen, by the way). But that didn't stop the ruckus. Player A's gripe was completely meritless and stupid, and was obviously just the result of being mad at losing a really big pot.

After 15 or 20 seconds of this nonsense, a guy sitting between A and B pulled out a referee's whistle and blew it--hard. You know how loud those things can be in a confined space like a small poker room. It was ear-splitting.

Ken, the shift supervisor, came over to the whistler, and told him calmly but firmly, "If you ever do that in this room again, you will be asked to leave." Mr. Whistle protested that he couldn't stand the stupid argument. Well, buddy, none of the rest of us could, either, but we didn't resort to a whistle!

It was truly one of the strangest moments in my poker experiences. I can't say I liked or approved of the technique, but it was instantly effective at terminating a pointless, annoying, and time-consuming argument.