You can't help another player--is this concept too difficult?

Hilton today. I'm in a pot against an inexperienced player I've never seen before. I have pocket 8s, both red. There is a pre-flop raise, which I and several others call. The flop is 8-9-10 with two clubs. There's a bet. I make a large raise to push out anybody hoping to draw to a straight or flush. This new player is the only one who calls me. The turn card is an offsuit jack. Ick. I don't like that because of the obvious possible straight sitting out there. But the pot is now large enough that I decide to push all-in, crossing my fingers and hoping that he was on the club draw and didn't just make his straight. The guy thinks for quite a while, then calls. He has a few chips left over after the dealer makes the pot right. The river card is an off-suit 7, putting a jack-high straight on the board. There is no possible flush, so unless my opponent has a queen (which I think is pretty unlikely), we're going to split the pot.

I turn up my 8s. He looks at the cards and the board, gets a befuddled look on his face. It's obvious that he doesn't know what to do, but he's aware that everybody is looking at him to do something. Bizarrely, he grabs his remaining chips and pushes them forward. The dealer politely returns them to him and reminds him that I'm all-in and there is no more betting. He still looks confused.

At this point, I'm dearly hoping that he decides that my set of 8s has him beat, and he will just muck his hand face-down, relinquishing his half of the pot, so I can take the whole thing. I'm hyperalert to anybody talking to him, because I just know that some blabbermouth will feel obligated to help him in some way: tell him to turn his cards up, or point out that there is a straight on the board, or some such thing.

Sure enough, a woman at the far end starts to say, "There's a..."--and quick as a wink I cut her off, saying, "Please don't help him." The guy has still got the deer-in-the-headlights look, and he's looking at the dealer. Bless her, the dealer just tells him, "We're waiting for you, sir." Of course, if he asks what his options are, she can inform him that he can either turn his card face up or muck them face down, but she correctly does not offer even this much assistance, since he didn't ask.

Finally, he turns his cards up. Amazingly, he has 10-10. We had a set-over-set situation, in which I had the worst of it, and didn't know it. I thought the straight killed my winning hand, when, in fact, it saved me. The pot gets split.

I have no idea what this guy was thinking during that 30 or 45 seconds when he froze and didn't know what to do. But it doesn't matter.

The point here is the predictability that somebody would attempt to step in and help him. Folks, you just can't do that! Of course, it's possible that whatever that woman was going to say would have been innocuous and within the rules, but it's much more likely that she was going to say something that would have helped him make his decision (between tabling his cards face up and mucking them face down), and I wasn't going to let her. I really couldn't even wait to find out what she was going to say, because if I was right, the damage would have been done, and protesting after the fact wouldn't do much good.

After the hand was over, the guy next to me said, "She can tell him there's a straight on the board." No, she can't. Really the only things you can say about the hand while it's in progress are the pieces of information that are freely available to everybody: what the community cards are (in case somebody with poor vision can't make them out, for example), where the action is, what the amount of the last bet was, etc. Telling somebody that there is a straight on the board goes beyond that, into the realm of interpreteting the raw data of what the five cards are. That's helping (or at least potentially helping) a player who isn't paying attention. One player to a hand means no helping of that sort. This guy had the right to muck his hand if he wanted to, even if it would have been stupid to do so.

(Confession: I have twice mistakenly mucked the winning hand, and just last week accidentally forfeited my share of what would have been a 4-way split pot, by mucking--in each case because I misread the board. All my own fault. This guy must be allowed to make the same kind of mistake all by himself. It's part of the learning curve of poker to lose money because you screw up.)

Both the dealer and the other players are also forbidden to instruct another player to turn his cards face up. That's crossing the line from telling him what his options are--i.e., what he may do--to telling him what he should do. That territory is strictly off-limits. The dealer can tell him, if asked, that she can't award the pot to anybody while his cards remain live but face down. But she can't instruct him to turn them up any more than she can turn them up for him, because that is taking an important decision away from the player.

We all have a social impulse to be helpful. And that's a good thing in nearly every aspect of life. But the poker table is different. A player in a poker game has to fend for himself.

A few weeks ago in a Saturday Hilton tournament, we were down to just 6 or 7 players. A woman was trying to decide when to make a dash for a restroom break because she couldn't wait until the next scheduled break. A friend was pointing out to her when it might be most advantageous to go. Marc Nelson, the tournament director, correctly stopped her. The friend protested, "We're just talking about when to go to the bathroom!" But that was a decision with considerable strategic implications, given how big the blinds were and how fast they were coming around. He was absolutely right to stop that discussion.

Now, there are plenty of exceptions. Last week I was seated next to a woman who freely announced that it was her first time playing in a casino, and she'd appreciate help. I made sure the dealers knew this, because they're much more likely to give only the kind of help that is proper. Other players, unfortunately, in their zeal to be nice, tend to cross the line all too easily. For example, when this woman was faced with a large bet on the river, and there was 4 parts of a straight on the board, a player told her, "Don't call unless you can beat a straight." Well, that's just way more help than any player or dealer is allowed to give. After the hand, if it seems that she made a blunder and appears to welcome strategic advice, that's OK--but not during the hand. I was also happy to explain to her how the high-hand jackpots worked, why it's wise to cap one's cards, how to tell when it's her turn or whether she's in one of the blinds, etc. Those are all just pieces of general information, things that everybody is entitled to know, and things that the dealer would be happy to explain to her; I'm just in a position to do it more quickly and quietly, sitting next to her.

Unfortuantely, there are way too many players who don't understand the boundary between what can be said and what can't. If you're not absolutely certain, discretion is the better part of valor. Just keep it to yourself. The dealer will give a player needing help all that is allowed.