New rule at Mandalay Bay

I was playing at Mandalay Bay yesterday, as I do most Sundays lately. I like it there, though the infamously quirky house rules are occasionally annoying. (Click here for a link to all the things I've written about their rules.)

Like, for instance, the no-texting rule. It is one of the few places in town that doesn't allow it. So when I want to exchange text messages with friends, or read/post on Twitter, I either step away from the table as I'm supposed to, or do it discreetly until a dealer reminds me not to, then wait for the next dealer before resuming. (I'm not just being rebellious; my hope was that if dealers had to enforce this stupid rule often enough, they would get tired of it and help lobby management to repeal it.) I never do texting while in a hand, and I think there have been only two occasions where I have been absorbed enough that I didn't notice it was my turn, and the game got delayed a few seconds because of me.

So yesterday I was noticing that even the dealers who are usually the quickest to tell players to please not text at the table were saying nothing. There are also a few dealers who, at the beginning of every down, run down a list of things they want to be sure all the players know about--jackpots, betting lines, verbal declarations of action are binding even out of turn, no use of cell phones at the table, etc. I noticed that that last item wasn't being included. Hmmm.

Finally, I overheard a snippet of conversation between one dealer and an obviously regular player about the new cell phone rule. I had music on at the time (this lovely 1984 recording of Vincenzo Bellini's "Norma," with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti) so I didn't hear exactly what they said, but it caught my attention because of my observations that texting wasn't being stopped or mentioned. I asked. The dealer told me that, yes, they had just changed that rule. Texting is, as I understand it, now allowed when one is not in a hand. Furthermore, cell phones can now be kept on the table, which was prohibited before. However, talking on one's phone is still not permitted at the table, whether in a hand or not--a rule to which I have no objection.

Back in August I wrote about how M.B. had begun to allow players to chop the blinds when there's a hand nobody wants to play. Ever so slowly, one gradual, reluctant step at a time, it seems that Mandalay Bay's poker room is clunking along to catch up with the rules that are mostly standard at every other place in town.