Cell phones

You just knew I'd get around to griping about this sooner or later, didn't you? It's commonplace to read/hear people grumbling about other people using cell phones in cars, theaters, restaurants, public transportation, business meetings, etc. So I'll take it upon myself to add poker rooms to the list of places in which cell phones are potentially problematic and rude.

I have to start by saying, though, that I'm somewhat conflicted about this. As a competitor, it's to my advantage to have opponents jabbering away with Aunt Bee about coming to dinner next Thursday, or negotiating a real estate sales price, or ordering a pizza, or whatever. They have that much less attention available for the game, which means that they're more prone to making mistakes.

It also makes their play much more straightforward, in that anything distracting (eating, watching a football game, etc.) makes it much more difficult to bluff. Bluffing takes a lot more thought and attention than textbook, A-B-C, play-your-cards poker does. Anybody who is engaged fairly deeply in conversation or any other activity is only secondarily interested in playing poker, so they tend to play only premium hands, bet/call/raise if they've improved, and fold otherwise so that they can quickly get back to whatever it is that they're really interested in.* In that sense, players on cell phones are unusually easy to deal with, for the most part, because you can pretty much rule out serious trickery going on in their preoccupied brains.

Still, it's just plain tacky and rude. Just as in all those other venues, the rest of us just don't want to have your conversation inflicted on us. I really don't mind the 30-second calls that are basically, "I'm still playing poker. I'll be home in an hour." Those are, I think, harmless and innocuous, and impose pretty minimally on others' ears. The ones who get on my nerves are the idiots who yammer on and on (I once sat at a table at Caesars Palace with a guy who engaged in a 30-minute call!), or who take calls every few minutes.

For those jerks, I have a few thoughts:

1) If you're so in demand that you can't leave those calls for later, then you don't have time to be playing poker. Go attend to whatever personal or family or professional business you have obviously decided is more important than playing poker, and come back some other time when you're genuinely at leisure.

2) This is just a rumor I've heard, so I can't be sure whether it's really true or not. It seems unbelievable, but maybe, just maybe, there's something to it. I've heard that at least SOME models of cell phones have an "off" button or switch. No, really! That's what I've heard! I know it sounds crazy, but who knows?! The same people say that nearly every cell phone service has automatic voice-mail service that kicks in when the phone is turned off. Maybe it's just an urban legend, like the risk of waking up in a tub of ice with a note saying your kidneys have been stolen. But it's worth looking into.

3) You're probably not actually as urgently in demand every minute as you'd like to believe, you egomaniacal idiot. The world just might be able to keep spinning even if you didn't take calls for a couple of hours.

With that out of the way, I feel a need to address poker room rules about cell phone use. It's one of the most non-standardized areas of the rules. In some places, you can't use phones at all.** In some, you just can't use them at the table, but if you step away, you're OK. In others you can talk at the table, as long as you're not in a hand (and they won't deal you a hand if you're on the phone when the cards are dealt). In some, they say cell phones at the table are fine as long as you're not slowing down the game. Finally, some places have no restrictions whatsoever.

To make it even more complicated, some casinos impose diferent rules on cell phone use for poker tournaments than for cash-game play, a distinction that, as far as I can tell, is completely ridiculous and groundless. How can it possibly make any difference? If concern about collusion with an outside agent is the reason for the tournament restriction, then is the casino not concerned about such collusion during its regular games? I can't fathom what motivates treating the two situations differently. It seems completely irrational to me.

Anyway, if I had my own casino, and were free to impose whatever rules I wanted, I think I'd take the tack that brief calls were to be allowed at the table (say, under one minute), but if a player answered the call while in a hand, his hand is ruled dead, and he can't be given cards while he's talking. This is only secondarily to prevent collusion (which I think is a pretty remote worry); it's mainly to prevent these people from slowing down the game--because they definitely do make things creep along with their inattention. Dealers would politely ask players on phones to step away from the table after a minute or so, if it appeared that the call was going to continue. This would not only help prevent the talker from imposing his conversation on everybody, but would facilitate necessary communication at the table (as to where the action is, what the current bet is, and so forth). It would, I hope, also emphasize to people that you're either talking on your stupid phone or you're playing poker--not both.

But still, I have to admit that that would be a pretty arbitrary rule, when so many other distractions are allowed or even actively encouraged: meals delivered to the tables, big plasma TV screens all around, massages available at the table, MP3 players cranking away, etc. Maybe in my own casino I'd get cranky and ban them all, telling people that if they're there to play poker, then play poker, dammit!

Or maybe I'd side with the sharks who like their fish as distracted as possible, and encourage all such side entertainments.

Like I said, I'm conflicted about this whole thing. It's annoying, particularly to somebody like me who has purist tendencies, and who appreciates quietness, but, on the other hand, it makes it that much easier to make money, which is kind of the point of playing.



*I notice the same tendency in myself, on the occasions that I indulge in an ice cream cone while playing. It's kind of inconvenient to play while one hand is full, and my attention keeps going to preventing the thing from dripping, so I revert to tighter hand selection, and I'm more willing to fold when there's a decision to be made. There: to any opponents who hadn't already figured that out about me, now you know.

**In Vegas casinos, this is sometimes imposed by the Nevada Gaming Commission because of the proximity to the sports book. Apparently the regulators don't want people telephoning their friends with the betting lines/spreads established by a casino. This is an idiotic and woefully outdated rule, what with the lines being available within minutes after they change at about a zillion different internet sites that monitor such things constantly. It's perfectly OK to, e.g., take a photograph of a sports book's big board, step outside, and email that photo from your phone/PDA/laptop to anywhere you'd like. It's crazy, in an age of so many ways of transmitting information instantaneously worldwide, to try to stomp out one particular way of doing so (cell phones), while the others are unregulated.

Nevertheless, the poor casinos have to do what the regulators say, with threats of big fines if they're caught not enforcing the rules. I notice this problem most at the Hilton, which is one of the places that has to impose a no-cell-phones rule for its poker room. The staff seem to spend half of their time telling this to people over and over and over again. The people who have to be told this tend to fall into one of two categories. There's the idiots who never noticed the dozens of big signs hung all over the place saying something like "All cell phone use is strictly prohibited in the entire sports book area and poker room by Nevada Gaming Regulations." Then there's the jerks who are perfectly aware of the rule, and just trust that nothing more will happen to them than that they get another polite reminder to get off their phone. This group baffles me. If you don't like or refuse to obey the rules a particular establishment has, why keep going there? Either follow the rules, or boycott the place and tell them why you won't play there. It reveals a lack of personal integrity to patronize an establishment, thereby tacitly agreeing to abide by the applicable rules of conduct, then knowingly violate them time after time.