Not the same thing

I just got back from a session at the Rio--thought I'd get in a couple more there before the place becomes a madhouse with the World Series of Poker next week.

The player on my right was, well, full of himself. He was a know-it-all, kind of like Cliff Clavin in "Cheers." Particularly where the question was about poker rules, he considered himself to be an expert on par with Hoyle.* We had three players at the table who, it was painfully obvious, were having their first casino poker session. They were full of questions, and Mr. Hoyle thought it was his duty to pipe up and provide definitive answers, even if the questions were directed to the dealer. And, of course, the dealer's answer was never good enough--he always had to embellish on it. Basically, he just liked showing off that he knew poker rules.

Unfortunately, he was more confident than right, and not so good at following even the rules he knew.

There was a huge hand in progress as I sat down, with a four-way all-in. Mr. Hoyle was not in it, but the player on his right was; he and one of the newbies were the last ones with chips left after the betting round on the turn. At this point, Mr. Hoyle began chatting with the player on his right, speculating about what he thought the all-in players had. When the guy he is talking to still has live cards, chips, and decisions to make, and with an enormous pot being contested by so many players, this is an egregious violation of the one-player-to-a-hand rule.

Those being potentially disadvantaged by it (i.e., the ones who were already all-in) were down at the far end of the table, and probably couldn't hear, and therefore couldn't speak up in protest. So even though I had just sat down, I took it upon myself to stop him: "You really can't be discussing the hand with him while he still has action pending." Mr. Hoyle didn't acknowledge that he was wrong, but he did shut up.

I had no idea what sort of personality I was dealing with, since I had been there only a couple of minutes (the hand was extremely slow to play out because of the involvement of the inexperienced players, who were completely bewildered by the multiple all-in bets, side pots, etc.). But as I was to find out, I had apparently caused a considerable bruise to his ego with this mildest of scoldings.

Several hands later, I injected myself again, though the situation was quite different: The dealer misread a tricky board. The final community cards were 3-3-3-4-8. Player A had pocket jacks. Player B had pocket 4s. Both players thought that A was the winner. The dealer did, too, and was starting to push the pot to A. All three of them were seeing threes full of jacks beating threes full of fours. But actually player B had the better hand, with fours full of threes. It's an easy mistake to make in that situation.

Anyway, it got straightened out, and the pot was properly given to Player B. When it was over, Mr. Hoyle nudged me and said, "You know, just like about me talking about the hand? Well, you shouldn't be helping the players there, either."

I don't like to get into arguments at the poker table, and I didn't expect that I could convince him of how wrong he was, and the situation didn't seem likely to come up again that session, so I ignored his remark and let it drop.

But he was absolutely wrong.

His error in the first hand was potentially providing information/assistance to a player who still had decisions to make. In the second hand, no player had any decision left to make. I was correcting a dealer error, not helping another player. Yes, it's true that both players had misread Player B's hand. But once both players had turned their cards face up on the table, they are not required to make an accurate determination of what their best five-card hand is, or who the winner is--that becomes the dealer's obligation.

Now, if the situation were slightly different, if B had flashed his cards, then started to muck them thinking that he had lost, I would be out of line to stop him or speak up to inform him that he had the winner, because he would have to be left alone to decide whether to throw them away or turn them face up for the dealer to read.

Cards face-up on the table speak for themselves, and the player with the best hand is entitled to the pot (absent an exceptional situation in which there is something he has done wrong or failed to do right, as in the stories discussed here).**

What's more is that players have an affirmative ethical obligation to prevent just such dealer mistakes from being made. For example, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 62, rule 9.15: "Any player who sees an incorrect amount of chips put into the pot, or an error about to be made in awarding the pot, shall point out the error to the dealer at the earliest possible opportunity." Krieger and Bykofsky, in The Rules of Poker, agree: "Although the dealer is required to determine the best hand and award the pot accordingly, cards speak, and every player at the table has an ethical obligation to speak up if he notices a dealer error." (Rule 5.22, p. 140.)

I was puzzled by Mr. Hoyle's critique of my intervention at first, but, as I mentioned earlier, as time went by, it became clear that his ego was heavily invested in always being right, and I had done damage to that fragile self-image. Psychologically, he needed to redeem himself, and finding a spot in which he could return my admonishment filled the bill for him. Getting the criticism in so as to balance the scales was far more important to him than actually being right.

Egos make people do the strangest things.




*Yes, I know that Hoyle died before poker as we know it was invented. But it's just a figure of speech. And besides, Hoyle is in the poker hall of fame, though that has always struck me as kind of an oddity.

** Funny story--at least it was funny at the time. The first day of class in poker dealer school, the instructor was trying to teach this principle, which is usually condensed to just "cards speak"--two words that this instructor kept repeating, to drill it into us. He had an extremely thick Filipino accent. A young woman sitting next to me asked at the next break what the teacher had been saying. I explained it. "Oh," she said. "That makes sense. I thought he was saying 'cod spick,' and I had no idea what that was about."

I predict that when this is posted it will be the only page on the whole world wide web in which the phrase "cod spick" appears.