Tropicana: The poker room with no rules

Just a couple of weeks ago, a reader emailed me privately to ask how I deal with it when another player gets so mad at me that I get physically threatened. I had to tell him that as far as I could recall that had never happened.

I spoke too soon.

But that's the second story of the post, so you'll just have to be patient before we get to it.

Tropicana

Back in October I posted here the story of the most unpleasant hour I've spent at a poker table, during my first visit to the Tropicana (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/tropicana-home-of-most-obnoxious-poker.html). With the rodeo in town this week, I thought the Trop might be a spot where there would be a decent number of cowboys eager to give me their money (there weren't, as it turned out--lots of them playing slots, but not poker), so I decided to give the room another chance to impress me. It has been more than a year, after all.

Well, they didn't start off very well. There was only one table going when I walked in. There was nobody at the desk, but there is a poker table immediately adjacent to the desk, and three employees were sitting there chatting. I stepped over next to the table, thinking one of them would tell me about the waiting list status. They kept talking. All three of them looked up and caught my eye, then ignored me and continued chatting. (To be precise, one was reading a magazine, not talking.) Clearly they felt that it was not in their job description to acknowledge my existence.

After a couple of minutes the shift supervisor returned from wherever he had been and duly took my name for the list. It was only about another 10 minutes before a new game started, which isn't bad. But having three poker room employees see me standing there looking for assistance and then completely ignore me was not exactly a warm, friendly, way to start this room's second chance.

Verbal declarations are binding--well, maybe sometimes

Within the first hour of being moved from the newly opened table to the one that had previously been going (a move I requested, for reasons to be detailed later), I was involved in the first controversy. I had a big pocket pair. The player under the gun raised. He had been playing very loose, raising a lot, and bluffing a lot, so this didn't necessarily mean much. A player two seats to my right noticed this, and, before he touched his cards, smiled and said, "I'm going to raise you without even looking at my cards." He then picked up his down cards, thought a moment, and mucked them. I looked at the dealer to see if she was going to do or say anything, but she just collected his cards and looked at the next player to act, as if nothing unusual had transpired.

Well, I would welcome a raise in the dark by this guy, because I'm going to come over the top of him, and his chips will probably become dead money in the pot (i.e., money that is later abandoned by the person who put it in), because he will likely fold when the action gets back around to him. So I ask the dealer if verbal declarations are binding, and repeat the guy's words: "I'm going to raise." The dealer says that this doesn't mean anything, and besides, I have spoken up quickly enough that there has been no action behind, so nobody has been harmed.

This is complete BS, but I have the dilemma that I'm already giving away the information that I would have welcomed a raise in the dark, so I really don't want to press the point. The bigger a deal I make of it, the less likely I am to get any callers on my raise. So I drop it. But it's still complete BS.

The undead hand

I learned tonight that there are zombie poker hands: they're dead, but not really dead. They are the undead.

Let me explain.

One of the standard rules--in fact, universal, so far as I know--is that if one or more of a player's hole cards winds up on the floor by any means other than the dealer accidentally pitching it off the table during the deal, that player's hand is instantly, automatically dead. Period, no excuses, no questions asked. (E.g., Roy Cooke, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, rule 16.12, p. 117: "A player's hand which is removed from sight or has a card dropped on the floor shall be declared dead. If a card falls to the floor for any reason other than being dealt off the table by the dealer, that player's hand is automatically dead.") This is part of a player's obligation to protect his hand. The rule is there because when a card is on the floor, all sorts of shenanigans can take place--switching it out for a different card, for example, or marking it for later identification, or holding onto it and not returning it to the dealer, in order to furtively re-introduce it (perhaps with another card "accidentally" on the floor) later.

I wasn't involved in the hand in question. Two other players were: one was a pleasant, calm, polite, middle-aged gentleman. The other was a highly volatile young man. I had noticed him while waiting for the table, and, in fact, even after I was seated in the new game I put in a request for a table change largely to be at the table with this hothead (let's call him "HH"). I had overheard him getting angry about minor things, and heard him tell a story about smashing his computer keyboard when he took a bad beat during online play. Just as importantly, I had heard him say that he was stuck about $800. A testosterone-fueled, adrenaline-pumped, aggressive, hotheaded, egotistical, volatile punk who is playing fast and loose, desperately trying to get back to even is like a juicy, ripe plum just waiting to be picked, and I wanted to share in the feast.

So anyway, the nice guy and HH get all their money in on a board of J-J-x-3-3. The pot is about $600. The nice guy shows first, and he has K-J. HH slams his cards down on the table face-up, and swears. Turns out he had A-J, so he would have won a huge pot if the board hadn't double-paired to give them both the same full house, with their kickers being irrelevant.

But, OOPS! When he slammed his cards down, he did it so forcefully that his jack bounced up off the table and onto the floor. He picked it up and put it back on the table. Everybody saw this--it wasn't exactly a furtive movement. (In fact, he had to walk around two other players to get to where it had landed.) The dealer said nothing, but just started to divide the pot in two.

I thought this was mighty strange. Either they don't have a house rule as per the usual convention of a card on the floor meaning a dead hand, or the dealer didn't know of such a rule, or the dealer was deliberately ignoring it. (She unquestionably saw the card go down and the player retrieve it.) Any of these three possible explanations is puzzling. So I asked her, "Do you have a house rule that a card off the table means a dead hand?" She said yes, then continued chopping the pot, as if the question had no relevance to what she was doing.

Well, HH heard me ask this, and nearly jumped out of his skin. "You mind your own business! You keep your nose out of my pot! You're not in this!" I replied that I simply wanted to know the house rule in case it came up in a future hand.

That was true. But I had two additional unspoken motives. First, in another recent post I explained that I think players who know the rules and see something happening that disadvantages another player who may not have enough knowledge, experience, or gumption to speak up in his own defense, have a general obligation to call attention to a situation, rather than sit quietly by and allow the rules to be broken. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/should-one-speak-up-when-not-involved.html.)

But just as importantly, given how angry HH was about an unlucky card giving him only half of a huge pot instead of the whole thing, I knew that if he had to reliquish the entire pot because of a dead hand, he would be on Super Monkey Tilt (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/monkey-poker-non-grumpy-content.html), and extremely vulnerable to being fleeced. (He had a lot more chips than the nice guy, and would still have about $300 sitting in front of him to be taken away by non-tilters.)

The dealer was trying hard not to have to do anything about this situation. I quietly asked her if she could call the floor, please. She disregarded that request and kept counting chips, so I asked again. All the while, HH is getting angrier and angrier, as he senses the impending loss of the entire pot. Mr. Nice Guy isn't getting involved, just sitting quietly.

The dealer finally responds to my request and signals the floor person to come over. Now HH starts throwing out the actual threats: if he loses this pot because of my intervention, he's going to beat me to a pulp--various things in that vein. He is loud; everybody in the room hears this.

Floor guy comes over, and I ask my question again about a card on the floor meaning a dead hand. He affirms that that is the house rule. The dealer describes what happened. HH confirms it, but justifies himself on the grounds that it was an accident. (Well, duh--nobody who thinks they're winning the pot intentionally throws their cards on the floor. When this rule is resorted to, the situation is nearly always an accident.)

The floor guy is not exactly the most decisive character I've ever met. His final ruling is this: The hand is "technically dead"--his exact words--but if the gentleman (and here he gestures at me, apparently mistakenly thinking that I'm the other party involved) agrees to split the pot, we would allow that.

This is a terrible stance to take. It quite overtly puts the onus on the innocent player, along with a healthy dose of social pressure to give up half of a pot that is, by the rules, rightly his. The only correct way to handle this is with absolutely clarity: You tell the dealer to push the entire pot to the only player with a live hand. Of course, if that player, on his own initiative, wants to split the pot, he can speak up and say something, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong for the floor person to be the one suggesting that. He needs to declare the hand dead, award the pot, and deal with whatever the fallout of that decision may be (in this case, particularly, the inevitable emotional outburst from HH). Suck it up, dude; make a decision and make it stick. That's what you're getting paid for!

The nice guy does, in fact, agree to split the pot. Another player opines that that's the only right thing to do, and says that he would never claim the whole pot under such circumstances. He asks, "Would anybody here take the money over a technicality like that?" I don't say anything--because, really, what's the point?--but the answer is yes, I would, 100% of the time, absolutely, in a heartbeat, and without even a speck of guilt or remorse. I didn't throw the guy's cards off the table, he did that to himself, and the rules clearly specify the consequences. That is just as much a part of the rules that we're playing by as that three of a kind beats two pairs.

Anyway, after the floor guy walks away, HH continues his verbal tirade against me. I'm wearing a red sweatshirt, and among other things he says, "A lot more parts of you are going to be the color of your shirt if you stick your nose into one of my pots again! I will come over there and rip your heart out!" He's at the other end of the table, so this stuff isn't said quietly. The dealer hears every word, says nothing, does nothing.

I have to note that throughout this whole thing, I am not goading HH on. Other than my one-sentence explanation that I would like to know the house rule in case it comes up again, I did not address him, make faces at him, taunt him, or even look him in the eye. I just sat there, quietly asked my questions of the dealer and the floor person, and once the dealer finally spoke up to say what had happened, I said not a single additional word.

Talking about the hand in progress is just fine

HH had another trait that won't surprise anybody who has shared a table with his type before: He insisted on speculating aloud about other players' hands. The majority of the hands he was involved with would have him saying things like "I think you missed your flush draw," "I can't beat your pocket kings," "I know you're bluffing this time," etc., while there were still other players yet to act behind him. Just as with my first time at the Tropicana, no dealer in nearly four hours did anything about this--with one exception. One time, one dealer turned to him with her index finger to her lips in the "Shhhh" gesture, a warning which he instantly disregarded. Nothing more was said or done about this conduct the entire time. There were literally dozens of violations of this rule from this one player during my time there.

The conclusion

From my experiences tonight, I have learned these things about the Tropicana poker room:

1. Verbal declarations may or may not be binding, depending on the whim of the dealer.

2. You can talk about the hand in progress all you want.

3. When a player's hand is declared "dead," it's not really dead, it's just "technically dead," which means that it's still live if (A) the player that would be adversely affected makes a big enough stink about it, (B) the opponent is intimidated into forfeiting half of the pot, and/or (C) the floor person is a weenie who can't or won't make the only possible call according to the rules, and enforce it.

4. If one player loudly, openly, repeatedly, seriously, loudly, directly threatens specific physical harm to another player, in a manner that is heard clearly by both dealers and the floor person, absolutely nothing will be done to stop him, warn him, or punish him. Instead, the employees will act as if they heard nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder if their house rule book is divided into two sections: the rules that will be enforced and the rules that won't be enforced. Maybe the latter are just labeled "suggestions" or "guidelines," because clearly they're not "rules" by any standard definition of that word.

My two trips to the Tropicana have both been quite horrible experiences, and both for the same reason: The poker room staff cowtows to loud, obnoxious bullies. It does nothing to discourage their antics, and, therefore, promotes such repugnant behavior. Apparently this kind of conduct is considered the norm there, since I have witnessed it two out of two times, and the employees all--yes, literally all--react as if it were an everyday occurrence, saying and doing nothing to stop it.

I can only conclude, as I originally did back in August, 2006, that the Tropicana has, for whatever strange reason, decided to cater to rude, obnoxious jerks--not only to tolerate their conduct, but to nurture and encourage it (because that is the natural, inevitable consequence of sitting quietly by). What I witnessed on my first visit was not an aberration, as the executive later tried to claim in his letter. It is, in fact, what goes on there daily, as far as I can tell.

It is one of the worst-run poker rooms in the city--and given the existence of places like Arizona Charlie's (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-poker-dump.html), Jokers Wild (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-think-im-going-to-throw-up-part-2.html), and the El Cortez (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/04/armpit-of-las-vegas-poker.html), that's really saying something.

It's not a place I'm going to want to spend even another minute.


Addendum, December 14, 2007

Three commenters (see below) have all said basically the same thing: If I and everybody else saw the jack before it popped off the table, then isn't the hand-killing rule just being hypertechnical?

It's certainly true that if everybody has clearly seen the card before it goes sailing, there is a lot less reason to be concerned and deploy the death penalty. But that wasn't the case here. Apparently I told the story in a way that didn't make that clear, when I said that he had A-J and that he slammed his cards down face-up. So let me be more precise: He definitely slammed the ace down face-up, so I am assuming that the other card with it was face-up, too. I am also assuming that the other card that had been in his hand was the jack that he picked up off the floor. I can't claim to have seen that, though--all I saw was a blur of motion.

In fact, I don't know that anybody saw the card that went off the table before it went out of sight. Perhaps somebody did, but they would have had to be looking right at the spot on the table where he threw them, and have a quick eye, in order to see that card before it went to the floor. For all I know, he had an ace-deuce, and somehow picked the jack up off of the floor to show everybody. No, I don't really think that's what happened, but it's precisely the problem with cards on the floor--nobody knows. But if I somehow left the impression that everybody clearly saw what he had before the jack went flying, well, I hope this clears that up. During the ensuring discussion about how to handle the situation, not a single other player volunteered as a witness to say that he or she had clearly seen the card before it flew away. (On the other hand, the floor person didn't ask if anybody could vouch for what the card was.)

Another commenter says that he has not seen the death penalty imposed where he has played or worked. I certainly don't have any basis for saying that that is not so, and if he's right, then the rule may not be as universal as I have been led to believe. A card off the table is pretty rare--I think I've only seen it three times. But all three times it was declared dead, so my experience, slim as it is, matches the wording in Cooke's rulebook. I was also taught the same principle in poker dealer school.

I appreciate commenter Pete's reference to Robert's Rules of Poker. It was late last night when I was writing, and I was too tired to check all my usual sources for rules questions, so I overlooked that point. It's interesting and surprising. I'm going to email Mr. Ciaffone and ask him about that. If I get a reply, I'll post it here.