Peeking at another player's cards

Somebody posted this question on the allvegaspoker.com forums:

"If a player is holding their hole cards in a way that you can see them, do you tell the player, do you keep on playing, if you tell the player and they still keep doing it do you look away, or do you still keep looking?"

I wrote up my answer and posted it. But since I'm a shameless recycler of my own material, I decided that it might make for a worthwhile post here, too. So here's my response:

I used to think that he got one warning, then all was fair game. And I wouldn't criticize somebody who took that approach. It's a pretty reasonable one.

Just "not looking" is, IMHO, not really an adequate response, because there are times when it's almost impossible NOT to see--for example, when the flasher is on your right, and you have to be looking there to see when his action is done and it's your turn.

What has changed my mind is being in situations where I'm in, say, seat 10, and I can observe that seat 6 is frequently able and willing to look at seat 5's cards. Well, I sure don't want to be in a multi-way pot with those two, when seat 6 has a huge information advantage. Therefore, when I see that happening, I first point it out to seat 5. If it happens again, I talk to the dealer (loudly enough that everybody at the table can hear it): "Can you please help seat 5 protect his hand better? Seat 6 keeps seeing what his cards are, which is an advantage the rest of us don't have."

That puts everybody on notice as to what's happening, and hopefully shames seat 6 into not looking anymore, even if 5 doesn't protect his hand better, because he feels everybody is watching him and he's not getting away with anything.

If it still keeps happening, I speak up every time I see it, hopefully annoying the dealer into doing something definitive about it. I'll even suggest that seat 5 be required to play the pot with his hand face up, since it's not fair that he showed it to seat 6 but not to the rest of us.

Anyway, since I won't tolerate a situation in which somebody else is able to peek at an opponent's cards when I can't, the "do unto others" principle, I believe, requires me to react the same way if I'm the one with the opportunity to take advantage. So basically I do the same thing if I'm the seat 6 guy. I tell seat 5 once or twice, then, if he is a slow learner, I ask the dealer to intervene.

I have ended up feeling better about this than I did with the "warn him once" solution, because I don't end up with an endless string of further decisions to make (e.g., am I leaning back just a tad further than comfort really requires, in order to get a peek? am I deliberately looking in that direction well before the action gets there, using the "I have to know when it's my turn" excuse to glean a little extra information?).

Again, I'm not going to insist that this is the only correct or defensible approach, but it has reduced the number of uncomfortable questions I have to confront myself with, which works well for me. Being naturally a kind of hyper-self-critical type, having to do less introspection and less retroactive moral second-guessing makes life easier.

I like to try to avoid difficult ethical dilemmas, and this solution makes everything clean and clear and out in the open and simple. It takes the responsibility off of me to repeatedly figure out what the right thing to do is and to do it every time.

That's the end of what I wrote in the forum. I'll just add here a quotation from Barry Greenstein's excellent book, Ace on the River, p. 84-85, where he lumps this problem together with several other ethically marginal/questionable situations:

I follow a stricter set of ethical guidelines than most of my opponents,
even if it costs me money in the short run. It has given me inner peace, and in
the long run I have actually profited from it.

...I try to be honest even in borderline areas.

Some players believe that they are justified when they disregard the rules
against someone who has cheated. Others believe it is acceptable to disregard
the rules against someone who may cheat them. Still others believe that
they are above the rules and everyone is fair game. If you are scrupulously
honest, no one is likely to cheat you in retaliation or because he thinks you
may cheat him.

Dishonesty gets in the way of a winning player. If losers are in a game
with suspicious activity, they will have a reason to stop playing. Conversely,
players will like to play with you as long as they know you play honestly. I try
to set a standard for obeying the rules against all opponents. If I can gain the
respect of the other players, they may follow my lead.

As for the illustration to this post, I thought maybe the "Dogs Playing Poker" series of paintings (Has the human race ever produced finer artwork? I think not.) had a scene of one of the dogs peeking at another one's cards surreptitiously, but, alas, it is not so. I had to settle for the card-sharing one instead.