Poker gems, #454

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, May 16, 2012 (vol. 25, #10), page 32.

Deceptive plays have value when being deceptive prevents your opponent(s) from defining your hand and therefore playing correctly against it. There is no point in being deceptive if your opponent can't read the situation anyway or would play incorrectly even if he knew your holding. That might be due to a lack of your opponent's hand reading ability or deficiencies of his play knowledge; but it is also becomes [sic] the case when your hand range widens and even quality hand readers wouldn't be able to narrowly define your hand.

Location, location, location

I have written a few times about playing against bullies and maniacs--for example, here and here. I inevitably talk about the importance of position. (Dang it. There was another long-ago post, I'm sure, about how I was faring badly seated to the right of a maniac at the Flamingo, until a seat opened on his left, I moved, and the tide turned. But now I can't find it, no matter what search strategy I use.)

In February of 2009, Shamus mentioned in one of his posts an interesting article by Rolf Slotboom, in which he challenges the conventional wisdom of trying to sit to the immediate left of a maniac. Among other points, he notes that everybody likes to adjust to the maniac by doing more check-raising, and if you're to the maniac's immediate left, you're likely to be caught in the trap with him. If, however, you're on the maniac's immediate right, then you're the last one to act after his bet, and you thus force the check-raiser to spring his trap before the action is back to you. This was the first time I had ever read a argument against the usual tactic, so it definitely caught my attention and got me thinking. About month later I was up against another maniac, on his immediate right, and that article was one of the reasons I decided not to move, as I explained here.

A recent issue of Card Player magazine had two columns dealing, in large part, with the question of position with respect to a maniac.

First, Todd Brunson explains his reasons for preferring to be a few seats to the maniac's left. Unfortunately, Card Player has recently revised its online format, using Flash, so there's no easy way for me to copy and paste a paragraph of the argument. But he makes many of the same points that Slotboom did. Most prominent is that other players will try to take the first seat or two to the left of the maniac and use raises to isolate him. If you are to their left, you can use the observation of what they are doing to trap them between the maniac and you, rather than you being the one that gets trapped in the middle, as can happen with the conventional advice.

Roy Cooke doesn't advocate any particular spot, but discusses how your strategy changes depending on where you are relative to the maniac.

Over the last five years, I have come to feel much less anxious about being stuck with a maniac on my left, probably because I have become more deft at the techniques of using his aggression against him judo-style. I find that I can manage myself from anywhere, for the most part.

As a rule of thumb, though, the more smart, adaptive players there are at the table, the more I want to be on the maniac's right, forcing those smart players to reveal their intentions before I have to act. Conversely, the more timid and unimaginative the opposition is, and the more I see that they are hunkering down and tightening up against his aggression, the more I'd prefer to be the one pulling the isolation moves from the maniac's left. The latter remains my most frequent choice, because the games I mostly play in are not exactly teeming with smart, flexible, observant players. (When they are, I try to find a softer table.)

But all three articles--Slotboom, Brunson, and Cooke--are worth reading and mulling over. The more tools and flexibility you have at your disposal, the better prepared you'll be for whatever situation you might find yourself in.

"Most"? Seriously?

Roy Cooke begins his latest column for Card Player magazine (January 26, 2011, vol. 24 #2) with this assertion:

"Most poker books encourage a rigid strategy. Few discuss constantly adapting your play to your opponents' tendencies."

Huh? I've read a good number of poker books, and I can't remember even one of them encouraging use of a rigid strategy. If I had, I think it would have stood out in my mind as so obviously, ridiculously wrong-headed that I would have (1) stopped reading it, and (2) blogged derisively about it right away.

The only possible exception that comes to mind is Kill Phil, but that is explicitly a book for beginners, outlining a strategy (actually, several strategies of varying complexity) by which an amateur can minimize the skill advantage that more experienced players have over him in a no-limit hold'em tournament. Its authors acknowledge that it is not a long-term winning approach to the game, and that readers will need to learn more finesse as they progress.

Even Phil Hellmuth's dated and basic Play Poker Like the Pros describes a few different broad categories of opponents' styles one is likely to encounter, and how one might adjust to play against each.

As a test, I just now pulled out my old (copyright 2000) copy of Poker for Dummies by Richard Harroch and Lou Krieger. In Chapter 2, "Essential Strategic Considerations," I find this on page 34, after description of a semi-bluff that went bad:

"What went wrong?" you ask yourself. "I had the perfect opportunity to
semi-bluff." Perfect, that is, only from the perspective of the cards on the
table and those in your hand. But it was far from perfect if you stopped to
consider your opponents. Your mistake involved considering only the cards while
choosing a strategy. Semi-bluffing doesn't work with players who always call.
You have to show them the best hand to take the money. While there was nothing
you could have done to win that pot, you certainly could have saved a bet on the
river.

Nothing was wrong with the strategy itself. It might have worked if the
cards were the same but your opponents were different. Knowing your opponents is
as important to winning at poker as understanding strategic concepts.

So the most simplified poker strategy book I own or know about, a mere 34 pages in, in the second chapter, is already emphasizing the point that Cooke says "most" poker books do not discuss.

Let's try another sample. This is the 2004 answer to the above publication, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker, by the late, great Andy Glazer. He actually gets to it even earlier than Harroch and Krieger did. In Chapter 1, page 7, under the heading, "Poker Is a Card Game and a People Game," Glazer writes:

It is difficult to imagine a game in which context is more important than
it is in poker--where the right decision against Jeff may be the wrong decision
against Phil, or where the right decision against a player who has been winning
for the last 20 minutes would be the wrong decision against someone who has been
losing heavily during that time.

Although many decisions are clear-cut--for example, you would not want to
fold the strongest possible hand in poker, a royal flush--just how you should
bet with your royal flush to maximize the amount you will win isn't at all
clear-cut.

Some players will be intimidatd by an early bet and may drop out; if you're
up against such a player, you're much better off checking and hoping that he
catches some good cards and becomes the aggressor himself. The amount you will
win with this hand can vary dramatically depending on how well you understand
your opponents' tendencies and personalities.

So, again, a book aimed at completely green beginners addresses this point at the earliest opportunity.

I'm completely unable to understand how Cooke could hold this opinion. How many poker books has he read, and how many of them recommended an inflexible strategy, rather than adapting one's play to the table?

Readers, I'm calling on you. If you can recall any poker strategy book that conforms to the description that Cooke says is true of "most" of them, please leave a comment here with the book's title and author, with a page number (and exact quotation, if you feel up to it) where such a recommendation is to be found. My guess is that even with the number of books we have collectively read, we won't come up with any.

A challenge to Mr. Cooke: Can you quote me even one poker strategy book that fits the description you gave for "most" of them? It should be easy, if what you say is true.

I suppose I should add that I happen to enjoy reading Cooke's columns and thinking through the situations he describes. I also adore his rulebook, Rules of Real Poker--it's the best one in print. He is no fool, and it is not my purpose to denounce him as one. This strange assertion is, I think, a rare glitch, but it sure is a whopper.

Poker gems, #219

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, February 25, 2009 (vol. 22, #4), p. 52.


When you play poker, your goal is to win money. If you play a style that's designed to keep you from losing money, you can never win.

Poker gems, #172

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, October 8, 2008 (vol. 21, #20), p. 60.


I often hear players moan about how they ran bad, got unlucky, and were coolered by the deck. They fail to understand that none of that matters. It's your job to play your hand the best that you can, given the data available at the point of decision. That's your only job. Sometimes you're just wrong. Sometimes the deck will just stick it to you. And sometime you will get lucky, as the deck will deliver a miracle card. It's all irrelevant. Just keep doing your job, getting your bets in as best you can.

Poker gems, #133

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, June 4, 2008 (Vol. 21, #11), p. 66:

You don't need to be the best [poker] player in the world to perform well, just one of the two or three best at your table, in most situations.

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.

Lying about your hand

"Did you know that it's OK to lie about your hand, but you're not allowed to tell the truth about it?"

I heard that from a woman at the table yesterday at the Flamingo. It's not the first time that I've heard somebody make such an assertion. Most famously, Annie Duke said essentially the same thing during one of the 2006 World Series of Poker episodes. I suspect that the 700 million re-broadcasts of the series are ultimately the source by which most players "know" this rule.

But it's not true. The fact that so many people hear this and instantly believe it is just one tiny manifestation of the general societal problem that most people have precious little training or experience in critical thinking.* Even if I weren't pretty well attuned to the subject of poker rules, just an overall skepticism about accepting as fact things that people say would have caused me to raise a quizzical eyebrow at Ms. Duke's claim. I would immediately think, "Can that really be true? If so, it doesn't make any sense at all."

Let me address this under three headings: (1) Why the "rule" as stated would be stupid and pointless, (2) What the rule actually is, and (3) What I think the rule should be.

The alleged rule would be stupid and pointless

Suppose for a moment that there really were a rule that said that you could say any lie you wanted to about your hand, but couldn't tell the truth about what you were holding. Two prominent poker columnists have recently addressed this in detail, apparently both believing that there actually is just such a rule. They both do a nice job of explaining why it's ridiculous.

First is Steve Zolotow, writing for Card Player magazine (http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/57/10074):

Someone in the main event told the truth about his hand, saying, "I have a king." His opponent folded, but he received a one-round penalty for telling the truth. Obviously, he should have said, "I don't have a king," then paused and added, "but there is a penalty for telling the truth." Thus, he could have conveyed the same information by lying about his hand. As long as we know that our opponent must be lying, we can assume the opposite is the truth. Unless players are allowed to use some mix of truth and lies, they effectively are telling the truth.

Next up is Mike Caro, who calls this "the idiot rule," because it prevents people from disclosing whatever they want about their cards only if both players are idiots (http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=2351):

But the worst rule in poker states that you can't tell the truth about your hand. For instance, you can't say, "I have three aces," if you actually do. That sucks. It sucks because, by rule, anything I say must be a lie to be legal. So, if I say I have a full house, opponents are given information. They know I can't have a full house or I'd be in violation of the idiot rule. So, I guess, if I wanted to tell someone I had aces full, I'd have to say something like, "One thing I can say positively is that I don't have aces full." If I said that and didn't have aces full, I'd be telling the truth and in clear violation of the idiot rule. For that reason, astute opponents would know that I'm lying--which is legal--and that I absolutely do have aces-full.

Exactly so. A rule requiring that everything you say about your hand must be a lie would be (1) unenforceable (because not every hand gets opened to check to see if the player was telling the truth or not) and, (2) completely ineffective. In fact, paradoxically, the more rigorously it was enforced, the less effective it would become at the presumed goal of preventing collusion.

That ain't really the rule

Fortunately, nobody has yet, to the best of my knowledge, actually been stupid enough to implement the "rule" that Zolotow and Caro rail against. I'm really quite surprised that both of these columnists took the trouble to publish a critique of a rule that doesn't exist.

So where does this poker urban legend come from? As far as I can tell, the source is this language in the World Series of Poker rules (http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/pdfs/wsop.tournament-rules.07.pdf):

52. Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at all times. Therefore, whether in a hand or not, players may not a.) disclose contents of live or folded hands....

Notice that it doesn't say anything at all about "truth" or "lies." It forbids one to "disclose" the contents of one's hand. The number of ways that one can "disclose" one's holdings are limited only by the imagination. You could show your cards. You could just say what you have. You could tap it out with your feet in morse code. You could send smoke signals (well, except that they've banned smoking at the table now). You could let an opponent keep guessing, shaking your head "no" when he's wrong and nodding "yes" when he's right until he's got it, thus never speaking a word. Maybe if you have a touch of Marcel Marceau's spirit in you, you could pantomime it. It doesn't matter--they're all equally prohibited.

The implication is that you also can't "disclose" your hand by invoking a logical game such as Zolotow and Caro propose: "I do not have XYZ, but you know that I have to be lying about that." As they note, that is the functional equivalent of straightforwardly stating exactly what you have. Both are prohibited under the actual wording of the rule in question, because both are just two of the myriad methods by which one might "disclose" one's hand.

Let me repeat: There is no currently published rule anywhere that says or implies that you can lie about your hand but not tell the truth about it.

Let's look at some other common sources for poker rules, for the sake of completeness.

The Tournament Directors Association rule 12 is nearly identical to, and the probable source of, the WSOP rule:

Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at
all times. Therefore, players, whether in the hand or not, may not: 1. Disclose contents of live or folded hands....

Next is Bob Ciaffone's "Robert's Rules of Poker" (http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/chapter1.php):

The following actions are improper, and grounds for warning, suspending, or barring a violator:

...Revealing the contents of a live hand in a multihanded pot before the betting is complete. Do not divulge the contents of a hand during a deal even to someone not in the pot, so you do not leave any possibility of the information being transmitted to an active player.

Cooke's Rules of Real Poker--for my money the best single rulebook yet--says this (p. 71, rule 10.20):

A player shall not intentionally expose a card or reveal it verbally in order to induce or inhibit action. However, in head's up matches (where only two players are dealt in) revealing a card shall be permitted.

I'm not sure if this is intended to cover literally only games where there are only two people playing the whole time, or if it is intended to extend to full ring games, when only two players are contesting the pot.

Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, in their book The Rules of Poker: Essentials for Every Game, go even further, and would disallow such disclosures even when heads-up (p. 79, rule 3.9):

Intentionally exposing a card to induce or inhibit action is a serious breach of poker ethics, and in certain instances can be considered a form of collusion. It is never permitted.

Notice that not even one of these sources says even a single word about lying versus telling the truth. So the next time you hear somebody make such a claim, ask him or her to point you to the actual source where the alleged rule is written. It's a safe bet that the speaker will be unable to do so.

What should the rule be?

Let's talk about cash games first.

The overarching reason for any no-disclosure rule is to protect other players. For example, perhaps a player has moved all-in ahead of me before the flop and I have pocket kings. I move all-in, too, and show my cards before other people have had a chance to act, because I would really prefer to have to beat only the guy who is already all-in; large pocket pairs don't play well against, say, five or six opponents, so my action is intended to scare off opponents. But the person who first moved all-in may have something like suited 9-10, which plays much better, in terms of risk:reward ratio, when there are several players in the hand (because the payoff for hitting a straight or flush is potentially enormous). Obviously, the same reasoning applies to saying "I have two kings, so the rest of you should fold," even though the verbal disclosure leaves more doubt about the speaker's truthfulness than does showing the cards.

What about less specific disclosures, such as "I have a really big hand here"? I would outlaw them, too, on the slippery-slope argument. If you write the rule so that it only prohibits stating exactly what your cards are, then presumably it would be acceptable to say something like "I have a pocket pair bigger than queens." That comes so close to what is prohibited that the rule ceases to be useful. So I would move the dividing line all the way down to zero: you can't say anything that suggests--truthfully or not--the strength of your hand. I would also prohibit statements that come in the form of "I might have...," which is a common ploy of some players.

When there are only two players contesting the pot, however, a player disclosing his hand cannot do any harm to anybody except himself, and since I don't believe in protecting people from their own mistakes and/or stupidity, I'd allow it. There are times when revealing one or more cards can work to one's advantage in confusing or deceiving an opponent. Consider this absolutely brilliant ploy by Daniel Negreanu, where he combines showing one card, a statement about what the other one might be, and a scary-looking minimum raise, to get Sam Farha to fold a better hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d33K96MGzVA. It's an ingenius trick, one of the slyest bits of deception I've ever seen deployed at a poker table.

I was on the bad end of another skillful bit of deceptive revealing by an opponent a couple of months ago. I started with a strong hand (can't remember exactly what it was), but hated seeing three hearts on the flop, when I had none. The turn brought a fourth heart to the board. I bet, my tricky opponent took a long time to decide what to do. While thinking, he turned over the 7 of hearts. He finally called. The river was a blank. I decided that with just a 7-high flush, he must be worried that I had a higher flush, so I moved all-in. He insta-called with the look on his face of the cat that caught the canary (as, indeed, he had). His other card was the king of hearts. He had flopped the king-high flush, and his showing the lower card tricked me into thinking exactly what he wanted me to think: that he just had a low flush and was in a difficult spot, when really he had the second nuts. Well played, sir--you lured me in perfectly.

That kind of clever psychological gambit should absolutely be part of the game, as long as only two players are involved. So showing one or both hole cards, or announcing or hinting at your hand--honestly or dishonestly--is fine by me.

What about in tournaments? The same considerations hold for multi-way pots, but there's an added wrinkle in tournaments that makes the picture less clear for heads-up situations. That relates to the concept of "tournament equity." This isn't the place for detailed analysis, but basically, depending on the payout schedule, late in a tournament, how one player acts in a hand can dramatically affect the amount of money that other players--even those not involved in the current hand--can expect to win. This is at the heart of an interesting debate between Lee Jones and Daniel Negreanu, at http://www.biggerdeal.com/2007/10/05/daniel%e2%80%99s-wrong-i%e2%80%99m-10000-sure/. Be sure to read the comments, too. (One of the commenters is me. I'll let people guess which one.)

I don't know the optimal way to balance the advantages of allowing the kind of Negreanu-esque ploy, which has traditionally been an integral part of the game, against preventing injury to uninvolved players' tournament equity. Perhaps starting the ban on disclosing one's hand, even when only two people are in the pot, when the money is reached, or a few places before the money, or at the final table, would strike the best balance. Of course, even if it works that way, when it gets down to the final two contestants, the rule serves no purpose and could be taken out of effect again.

Back to the start

But all of that is mostly irrelevant to where I started this discussion. I began with griping about how so many players just hear somebody say what a poker rule is, and accept that as the gospel truth, without looking it up anywhere, without thinking very hard about whether the alleged rule makes any sense or not, etc. To compound the problem, these people then repeat it to others, spreading the disinformation. It makes me crazy. It's not that hard to find out what the rules really are.

So when you hear somebody claim that there's a poker rule that says ________, and you've never heard it before, ask for evidence. Hold the thought in suspension until you can verify it. Don't pass it on as it it's the revealed word of God.

And for Pete's sake, don't talk about your hand!


*I risk going off on a full-tilt tangent here, because this is one of my biggest all-time sources of frustration and dismay about the world. In fact, if I had the magical power to cure just one ill of humankind, I think it would be the lack of critical thinking. I would make every person on the planet instantly inclined to critical thinking, and skilled at it. This would immediately solve countless woes, from the relatively trivial (people wasting their money on pills that the sellers promise will cause miraculous weight loss, enlarge male genitalia, or make the user irresitible to the opposite sex) to the truly world-changing (people being led to believe that if they fly a commercial jet into a skyscraper they will be rewarded with a bevy of virgins in heaven). So don't get me started.


Addendum, December 7, 2007

I emailed Mr. Caro to tell him of my disagreement with the premise of his column (Mr. Zolotow doesn't have a published email address). He responded quickly, for which I am grateful. With his consent, I'll share his comment:

About the issue on “can’t tell the truth.” I know that rule is in existence. It only applies to tournaments, though. Many directors have since modified it. Hopefully, my urging had something to do with it. I was, I think, instrumental in arguing against it on several televised events I participated in. They even waived the “can’t show cards” heads-up rule in both the National Heads-up Championship (NBC) and Superstars, when I participated. That wasn’t my influence alone. Many others felt it made for good TV to adopt these changes.

I even had the honor of roasting the person who first put the rule into place at the WSOP.

This is useful information. I can't find any such rule in current, published sources, but it's certainly possible that, as suggested in Mr. Caro's reply, there are tournament directors who use such an unpublished rule specific to their facility, and/or that if I looked at older versions of tournament rules I would find it. I freely admit that I didn't investigate older materials, so if a must-lie rule previouly existed, I wouldn't know about it (having been in the poker world for only a couple of years now).

Should one speak up when not involved?

Reading through my old emails today reminded me of one I wrote a year ago about a quandary I faced when, on two consecutive days, I witnessed with a situation in which a rule violation by one player put another at a disadvantage. The dilemma for me was whether to speak up about it or not, when the dealers didn't correct the situations. There is something of a tradition in poker that players not involved in a hand should keep their noses out of it. That's certainly correct insofar as giving advice to those involved, but I don't believe it should also extend to sitting by silently when a rule violation hurts a player.

I'll describe the situations, briefly explain my rationale for non-involved players taking the initiative to speak up, then open the question to readers for comments.

Story #1.

A $1-$2 no-limit hold'em game at the Las Vegas Hilton. After the turn card is dealt, Player A bets $15. Player B moves all-in for $25. Player C calls. The dealer turns back to A, who immediately pushes all-in for around $90. As the dealer turns to C for his action, I speak up and point out that A does not have the option to re-raise there. Before anybody can react to my comment, though, C calls (for a little less than what A had put in). It turns out that C--a fairly weak and inexperienced player--was on a flush draw and missed. He then left the table.

After the hand, Player A acknowledged that he was wrong. He had had a very strong hand, and was eager to get all his chips in. I believe that his mistake was inadvertent. The dealer also acknowledged that he missed the fact that B's all-in was not a full raise, and therefore A could only fold or call. OK--everybody makes mistakes, and the actions happened so quickly that it would be easy to miss.

But what bothered me most was that Player A and two others at the table chastised me for attempting to intervene when I wasn't involved in the hand.

Story #2.

The next day I'm in the same type of game at Bally's. Player A raises. Player B pushes all-in for a substantial re-raise. Player C reluctantly calls. Player A appears equally unhappy about the re-raise, but eventually calls, and as he does so asks C, "You want to just check it down?" C agrees. The dealer does nothing. This time I didn't speak up, largely because the damage was already done: clearly, even if the dealer tells them that such an agreement is in violation of the rules, they'll both officially rescind the deal, but check anyway.

But I think that part of why I didn't protest was having just been criticized the previous day for intervening when I wasn't in the hand, and I didn't feel like being the bad guy twice in a row. I did get up and talk to the floorperson privately about the situation. He came to the table and asked the dealer about it. The dealer said he heard the collusion, but it had happened so fast that he couldn't stop it.

My general thoughts.

To my way of thinking, no player can help another make a decision, but every player has a duty to the integrity of the game, and the integrity of the game includes giving every player the full protection of the rules.

In my first scenario, if the illegal re-raise had been halted in time, I suspect that Player C would have been happy to be able to see the last card for the cheaper price, and save his last money if his draw didn't hit. In the second scenario, Player B would presumably not be pleased with the agreement between A and C, since he would prefer to have one of them push the other out of the pot, and thus only have to beat one other hand at the showdown, rather than two.

I don't know whether the disadvantaged players in these games didn't know the rules, weren't paying enough attention, or were too shy or intimidated to speak up. But even players who don't know all of the intricacies of the rules are entitled to their protection--and if the dealer doesn't act to enforce the rules protecting one player from the illegal action of another, it seems to me that other players should do so. It's just the old golden rule: I would want somebody else to speak up if I were being disadvantaged by an action I didn't know was illegal (because of being inexperienced, distracted, or whatever), so I should do the same in return.

I would also argue that it's better for the game in the long run if weaker players are protected by the more knowledgeable ones; if they know that their inexperience isn't going to be taken unfair advantage of, they'll be more likely to keep coming back.

These two stories occurred shortly after I had bought and read Cooke's Rules of Real Poker. One of the points that had caught my attention in that new book was rule 16.17: "A player should speak up immediately when he sees an error such as an incorrect amount going into the pot; a pot that is about to be awarded to the wrong person; a card going to the wrong person; or a flashed or marred card."

Comments?

If you are so inclined, dear readers, I would appreciate any comment you might have on whether I was right to speak up in the first situation (although I wasn't quite quick enough to prevent the damage from being done), whether I should have said something immediately at the table in the second situation (versus just keeping quiet, or going to the floor person after the hand was over, which is what I settled on). Also, if you like, comment on how there developed in some circles an unwritten rule that players not involved in the hand should keep quiet about any perceived irregularities, and how we can change that part of poker culture (assuming that you agree it should be changed), or why we should keep such a practice (if you think that players not in the hand should keep mum).

No-limit straddles

Every poker room in the city, save one, has what seems to me to be a flaw in its rules: specifically, a fixed amount for a straddle bet in no-limit games. This is my call for the other 50+ rooms to get with the program.

First, the basics. A straddle is the currently more popular term for what Michael Wiesenberg's poker dictionary (the best there is; see http://www.poker1.com/mcu/mculib_dictionary.asp) calls an overblind:

********
overblind
1. (v) Put in a blind when one is already present. In a traveling blind game, this could mean someone putting in an optional blind in addition to the mandatory blinds. In a game without mandatory blinds, this would be blinding a pot (putting in a blind) after someone else has killed it. (To put in an overblind is sometimes called to kill.) Sometimes called go the overs. 2. (n) The blind put in by the person who overblinds. In a 3-3-6 traveling blind game ($12 limit or $12 minimum bet no-limit), John might put in $12 before getting his cards. He has doubled the limit (or the minimum bet) to $24, and he gets last action before the draw. Someone might say, "John acts last; he has the overblind." Also straddle, for both meanings.
**********

Because a straddle is simply a blind raise (though whether it is technically a "raise" is a point I'll deal with shortly), with the option to reraise oneself, in limit games it makes sense for it to be the same amount that a regular raise from first position (i.e., under the gun) would be. But since no-limit games don’t restrict the size of a raise, it's illogical for the amount of a straddle to be limited.

To be sure, nearly every poker room with no-limit games allows only a fixed straddle of double the big blind. Treasure Island is the exception. (The astute reader may have guessed that from the choice of accompanying photo.) There, a straddle bet in a no-limit game can be of any size the player wants to make it, up to his whole stack. After thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re doing it right, and everybody else is doing it wrong.

Personally, I think straddles are generally pretty stupid strategy. (See my full rant on this at http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/11/live-straddle.html.) I rarely do them, but it doesn’t bother me that others like using them. It just seems to me that if the goal of allowing them in the first place is to increase action (particularly at a tight-fisted table), then that would be better achieved by allowing a straddle of any amount. As it stands, the difference between calling the $2 big blind (in a $1-2 game) and a $4 straddle is virtually nil. But a straddle to, say, $15 would definitely alter (and make more complicated) the decisions for the other players. And from the perspective of poker room managers, it will tend to increase the chance of getting a pot large enough to collect the maximum rake.

I’ve checked several sources, and there is very little advice in print about this question. Specifically, the allowable amount of a straddle in a no-limit game is not discussed in Cooke’s Rules of Real Poker or Lou Krieger’s Rules of Poker. Bob Ciaffone’s "Robert’s Rules of Poker" (never in print, as far as I know, but widely available online) specifies that the straddle amount is twice the big blind, but it’s not clear to me whether he is intending to include no-limit games in that prescription. In Paymar et al’s Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook, p. 141 (2nd edition), they don’t discuss no-limit games, but do say that in spread-limit games the straddle amount can be anything up to the maximum raise that would be allowed. This makes sense. Extending the same logic to no-limit games, the straddle amount should be unlimited.

Two technical questions that I can think of will come up if other poker rooms were to decide to give this a trial:

1. What is the minimum amount of a reraise? If the straddle is just a raise of the $2 big blind, then a straddle of, say, $15 is a $13 raise, and one would think that the minimum reraise would therefore be another $13, to a total of a $28 bet. But it may be better to think of the straddle not as a standard raise, but more like another (optional) blind. If so, then the minimum next raise would need to be double the straddle amount (e.g., to $30 on a $15 straddle). (Robert’s Rules, version 10, #15: “A straddle bet sets a new minimum bring-in; it is not treated as a raise.”) Personally, I think this makes more sense, and would be easier to implement, though it’s only a small difference.

2. What is the minimum bet on subsequent betting rounds? Usually the minimum bet on the flop, turn, and river is the amount of the big blind. Usually the occurrence of a straddle before the flop isn’t considered to change this. However, if one sees the straddle as, effectively, a third blind, then it might make more sense to use the straddle amount as the minimum bet size on subsequent streets, too. Furthermore, if there’s a straddle to, say, $15, with a call or two, a minimum bet on subsequent betting rounds of $15 is more sensible than reverting to a $2 minimum, given how big the pot is going to be. The question may never come up, because the kind of action junkie that will throw in a sizable straddle, given the chance, isn’t going to even consider a $2 bet when there’s a decent-sized pot built by his pre-flop action. But the room staff should make the decision in advance one way or the other, to be prepared, just in case.

So how about it, Venetian? Caesars? Mirage? MGM? Mandalay? Binion's? Red Rock? Who among you will step forward, admit that you've had an illogical rule in place, and change it?

Walking away in the middle of a hand--not recommended!

Tonight at the Hilton I witnessed another very strange occurrence in a poker hand--a player walking away from the table, leaving behind his would-have-been winning hand, and thereby forfeiting the pot. This also reminded me of a somewhat similar event from last fall.

For those who want the Reader's Digest condensed version without slogging through the stories, here's the moral: If you walk away from the table, you can't win the money, even if you have the best hand! Nobody should be that stupid.

Story #1:

Three players were involved. I folded before the flop and was just watching. Marty is a solid, above-average player in seat 4. Two people I don't recognise are in seats 5 and 6. The flop is J-Q-x, with the two face cards both being spades. Seat 5 pushes all-in, and both opponents call him. Seat 5 then makes his first mistake by flipping his cards face-up, even though the other two players can continue betting into a side pot after the turn and river cards are revealed. I don't know if he didn't realize that two people had called him (his action would be fine against just one opponent, since nobody would have any decisions left to make), or he just didn't understand why he shouldn't do that. (People develop strange bad habits in their casual home games, and tend to bring them to the casino, where they cause trouble.) He has the A-4 of spades, for the nut flush draw, with no pair.

Marty and Seat 6 both check after the turn card and again after the river, both of which are blanks. But as soon as Seat 5 sees that he didn't make his flush on the river, he makes his second mistake: he turns and walks away from the table, without waiting to see the other players' hands or to watch the pot being awarded. I suppose he must have assumed that at least one of the other two players had him beat. This was, in fact, pretty likely, but you never know for sure what people are doing in this crazy game.

So then the next bizarre thing happens: Seat 6 mucks his cards without showing them. He certainly could determine that he didn't have Seat 5's ace-high beat, but Marty hadn't shown yet. This means that Seat 6 couldn't possibly know for sure whether he won or lost.* I think that Seat 6 didn't grasp the implication of Seat 5 walking away (that is, that he was effectively forfeiting any claim to the pot, even if he had the best hand).

Marty is sharp, though, and absolutely knew what that meant. He wisely turned his hole cards face-up after seeing Seat 6 muck. He had a measly 9-10 offsuit, no pair, so he would have lost to the ace-high of Seat 5. He had been going for the straight draw and missed. But he was the only player who (1) was still at the table, and (2) showed his hand to the dealer and the table--which meant that he was the only one to whom the dealer could possibly award the pot, no matter how terrible his cards were!** The dealer can't push the pot to an empty seat, nor to a player who threw his cards away without showing them when the claim to the pot is still undecided.

The story has a coda. Former Seat 5 actually walked only to the poker room entrance, then stopped, as if he wasn't sure what to do next. After the next hand had begun, he came back over and stood next to his friend in seat 9 to watch him play. Seat 9 informs him that A-4 was actually the winning hand, but that he couldn't be awarded the pot because he gave up and left.

Now we're into the second hand after the one in question. I see and hear Former Seat 5 talking to the shift supervisor, Ken, at the front desk. Ken had no idea what had transpired. A few things seem immediately obvious to me: (1) No matter what Ken learns, he's not going to be able to rectify the situation now; it's a pretty universal rule that a player forfeits all claim to a pot if he waits until the next hand is in progress to make his protest about whatever happened.*** (2) Former Seat 5 can only relate first-hand what he saw, and the rest he's going to be recounting second-hand, and it will probably get garbled in the process. Which means that (3) Ken is soon going to have to come over to the table and query the dealer about what happened. The dealer, while a very sweet woman, speaks English as a second language, and she tends to get flustered when she feels under pressure, and when that happens, she doesn't relate events in a clear, concise manner. In other words, if Ken comes over to investigate, it's going to be a huge mess, with everybody offering facts, observations, and opinions, and it will stop the game cold for a long time while Ken sorts it all out. Moreover, Marty will probably come under at least some social pressure to give Former Seat 5 what he (Marty) won in that hand, or maybe split it. I don't think he should have to do that or even get pressed into such a gesture.

I think I can prevent the impending argument, because I know exactly what happened, and what facts are pertinent to applying the applicable rules. (It does occasionally come in handy to have graduated from a poker dealer school and to have the odd hobby of actually reading boring poker rule books.) So I hopped over and told Ken the story as recounted above. Former Seat 5 didn't deny having left his seat before seeing his opponents' hands. Ken gently explained that there was no way to give him the pot after the fact. (I didn't stick around to hear the explanation, but I assume it included both the fact that the guy had essentially forfeited any claim to the pot by leaving the area, and the fact that they couldn't correct anything this long after the hand was over anyway.) Former Seat 5 appeared to acknowledge that he had screwed up, though I'm only surmising this by body language and gestures. Fortunately, he didn't make a big stink about it.

Story #2:

This occurred the first time I played at the Suncoast last October. A new person was coming to the table, and the previous player from that seat had behind left a glass and a bottle of whatever he was drinking. The new player's hands were full with his chips, so the player in the adjacent seat graciously stood up, picked up the leftover crap, and walked over to the wastebasket near the poker room entrance to throw it away.

The problem was that this guy was, at that very moment, in the middle of a hand with a big pot, being contested by multiple players! He WALKED AWAY FROM THE TABLE, so when it came to his turn to act, and he wasn't in his seat, the dealer assumed he intended to fold and had gone out for a smoke or something. (This is very common, unfortunately. People often don't wait for their turn to fold before getting up to go to the restroom, get a snack, smoke, or whatever. They just leave their cards, knowing that the dealer will have no choice but to collect them as folded. It's rude and against the rules, but they do it all the time anyway.)

He was livid to return to the table and find that the dealer had mucked his cards. He claimed (plausibly, I thought--though it doesn't make even a speck of difference whether he was being truthful) to have had a flush, and that he would have beaten the hand that had been declared the winner. Maybe he did. But if so, it just magnifies the stupidity of walking away. He could have at least told the dealer, "I'm just stepping away to clear stuff out for this new player, I'll be back in ten seconds." That would have prevented the problem. He ranted on and on for 30 minutes about it.

Every poker room I've ever played in has posted on the wall a list of house rules. Usually near the top of the list is the universal mandate that each player must protect his or her own hand--protect it, that is, not only from being seen by other players, but from a whole variety of things that can cause it to be declared dead.**** These include the dealer accidentally collecting the cards after erroneously thinking the player has folded, another player's discarded hand getting intermingled with the player's live hole cards, and the cards falling off the table.

Walking away from the table isn't doing a very good job of protecting one's cards. It was this guy's own fault, and he just wouldn't admit it. The dealer took pretty intense abuse from him and from a couple of other players who agreed with him. She was actually close to tears. I stayed out of the controversy, except to reassure the dealer privately later that it wasn't her fault.

Moral of the stories (reprise):

If you're so stupid that you walk away from the table when you have money in the pot and it is even remotely possible that you might win the hand at showdown, you deserve to lose. All you have to do is sit there! What could be easier?!



*Even if he has no pair and both of his cards are lower than what's on the board--which means that the five community cards are his final hand, and his hole cards are ignored--that might be true for the other remaining player, too, in which case they would split the pot.


**He probably could have claimed it even without showing, since one opponent had forfeited by leaving and the other had forfeited by mucking his cards. But Marty is smart enough to make it all clean and legal and straightforward, and not leave open a possible argument somebody might have for reclaiming the pot if it came to a floor person's decision.


***E.g., Cooke, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 75:

11.13 After Showdown. ...Once the dealer has commenced the shuffle for the next hand then all rights to a decision regarding the previous hand are forfeited.


****See also:

The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook by Paymar, Harris, and Malmuth, p. 18 (emphasis in original):
1. Players must protect their own hands at all times. This may be the most important rule in all of poker. A hand may be declared "dead" if even one card touches the muck or if another player's card touches a hand that is not protected.... Although the dealer should be aware of only mucking discarded hands, a player who fails to take reasonable means to protect his or her hand usually has no recourse if the hand becomes fouled or if the dealer accidentally collects an unprotected hand.

Poker Tournament Directors' Association rules, #28:
Unprotected hands. If a dealer kills an unprotected hand, the player will have no redress and will not be entitled to a refund of bets.

Robert's Rules of Poker, Chapter 3, under "Irregularities":
2. You must protect your own hand at all times. Your cards may be protected with your hands, a chip, or other object placed on top of them. If you fail to protect your hand, you will have no redress if it becomes fouled or the dealer accidentally kills it.

Krieger and Bykofsky, The Rules of Poker, p. 242 (I don't know why this is only in their "Tournament rules" section; it would seem to apply equally to cash games):
9.35 Killing Unprotected Hands. If a dealer kills an unprotected hand, the player will have no redress and will not be entitled to his money back.

Cooke, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 75:
11.10 Protecting Interest in the Pot. A player with a hand he believes to be the winning hand is responsible to hold onto his own hand until the pot is awarded. No player with an interest in the pot should release his hand to the dealer until his portion of the pot has been pushed to him.


Addendum, February 28, 2008

Reader Darrell Davis emailed me the following note, with an interesting story similar to those above. It is posted here with his permission.

I have been reading your blog and see you sometimes recount other peoples
stories. Usually these are from people you know, not some anonymous internet
person, but I have a story that you might be interested in. It too involves a
dealer affecting the outcome of a hand.

I live outside of Dallas Texas. I normally play at Winstar Casino in
Oklahoma. They have a really nice 46 table poker room. I really like the place.
It always seems well run and efficient. But yesterday I had a hand that was
interesting.

I was playing in a 1-2 NL game. The person to my immediate right had just
lost a big pot and was left with only $8. He did not rebuy. This player was a
regular and seemed extra familar to the current dealer. I don't remember his
name, but I will call him Ted.

The next hand Ted limped in for $2. I looked down to find KhQh and raised
to $12. I got 3 callers, including Ted all in for his remaining $6. This created
a side pot of roughly $16. The flop came Jack high with 2 hearts. It checked to
me and I made a continuation bet. One player at the other end of the table was
contemplating a call. While he was thinking, Ted said "that's not good" and
stood up and walked away behind me.

The other player eventually folded. The dealer quickly threw out the turn
and river which did not improve my hand. I was left with King high as was well
aware that Ted might have had a winning hand. The dealer pushed me the side pot
and then said "lets see them". I asked if Ted's hand was dead. He looked behind
me and said "Ted are you still in this?". I looked over my shoulder and saw Ted
at least 10 feet away talking to another dealer. Ted walked over towards the
table, still talking to the other dealer. He stood about 2 feet behind his chair
and the dealer said "lets see a winner".

I figured if I said anything else Ted would realize that he might have a
winner and turn over his hand anyway. So I went ahead and turned over mine.

The dealer announced "King high" and then asked Ted what he had. Now Ted
realized he had the winner. He came the rest of the way to the table and turned
over his hand for an Ace high to take the main pot.

I jokingly asked the dealer how long he would have waited for Ted to return
to the table before he would have killed his hand. He didn't get it. I was
tempted to call for a ruling from the floor, but I realized that this would
definately make me the bad guy at the table. I really like to play the good guy
image and didn't want to change that. I decided to just concentrate on the next
hand.

The hand didn't affect the bottom line too much, there was roughly $40 in
the main pot. But it was the most interesting hand involving a dealer that I
have been involved in.

-Darrell

I probably would have handled this about the same way. When the guy is still in the room within earshot, he hasn't quite abandoned his hand. It would seem kind of nit-like to try to insist that his hand be killed under those circumstances, especially when (1) the guy is already down, (2) it's such a small amount of money involved, and (3) you can call the player back to the table just as quickly as you can call the floor over to make a decision. But he was definitely pushing the limits of what can reasonably be tolerated before he is considered to have forfeited his interest in the pot, IMHO.

What--chips into the pot aren't enough for you?

Every time I think I've seen it all, some idiotic player comes up with a new way to complain. This time it was a guy who--no kidding--thought that his opponent putting the right number of chips into the pot wasn't enough to constitute a call of his bet.

Hilton, Sunday. Player A is a 60-ish Floridian I've never seen before, one of those who likes to brag that he usually plays at much, much higher stakes than this--which is incredibly annoying and condescending. Player B, on my immediate right, is a 20-something tourist, friendly and inoffensive. I didn't learn either of their names. A is clearly a more experienced player, but B is a whole lot more fun to be around.

They get involved heads-up in a pot. The final board is A-4-3-4-5, with no flushes possible. Player A has been leading the betting all the way, with B just calling. The same pattern occurs on the river. A bets $40. B thinks quite a while, with the $40 in chips already counted out and in his right hand.

Finally he decides to call. He puts the chips well over the betting line with his right hand, and maybe half a second later flips up his hole cards with his left hand. He has A-9, for two pair (aces and fours) with a 9 kicker.

Player B nods in apparent acknowledgement. He picks up his down cards with one squarely on top of the other, and flashes the face of the bottom card to Player A. I see it, too--a 3. Then he tosses both cards face-down toward the dealer (Jessica), who dutifully mucks them. Jessica then begins to push the pot to B.

Here's where the surprising thing happened. As A sees the pot going past him toward B, he gets a startled look on his face and says, "Hey, what are you doing?"

Several of us at once say, "You mucked your cards!" He protests that Player B never called the $40 bet on the river. Apparently he was so distracted with looking at B's turned-up cards that he didn't notice that that action was preceded by B putting eight red chips out in front of him.

Player B was playing straight up, no doubt at all in my mind about that. He did nothing at all to conceal or mask his action. He wasn't shooting an angle, trying to barely have the chips touch the betting line, or any funny business like that. And I was watching him--he unquestionably put the chips in before exposing his hand (although it wouldn't have made any difference; in cash games when heads-up, it's usually allowed to expose one's hole cards to see if an opponent will react to them, before deciding what to do). He did nothing wrong whatsoever, just took the unusual (but not illegal or unethical, by any means) step of showing his hand first, rather than waiting for the bettor to show first. It's true that he never verbally announced "call," but he doesn't have to--actions with chips speak for themselves, by every rulebook of poker ever written.

Player A then compounded his problem by attempting, first, to pull the pot toward him. Jessica sternly rebuked him for this. He then attempted to fish his cards out of the muck. Again, Jessica correctly covered the muck with her hands and told him that he was not allowed to touch the cards. She did all this while calling for the floor person (Ken).

After sorting out the usual cacophony of voices and opinions offered to him all at once, Ken made the only possible decision: the pot went to Player B. Each player has the resonsibility to know what other players' actions have been, and to ask the dealer if it isn't clear.

Player A just screwed up--it's that simple. He failed to notice B putting out his chips, and, upon seeing B's cards face up, assumed, without asking, that B was folding. On the strength of that error and that assumption, he mucked his hand after flashing the 3.

His whole argument came down to two points. First, he claimed that Jessica hadn't announced the call. She says that she did. I don't know whether she did or not; because I knew by watching him that B had made the call, I would have completely tuned out the redundant announcement even if I had heard it. Furthermore, there is no rulebook in existence that says that a dealer failing to announce a player's action makes it as if that action hadn't occurred!

Second, he claimed to have had pocket 3s, for a full house (3s full of 4s). We should believe him, he said, even without having seen his second card, because he wouldn't bet $40 with just the lowest pair on the board. Oh, right--there's no such thing as bluffing in his world, I guess.

Well, too bad, dude. You folded your hand before the dealer awarded the pot, end of story.

In The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook by Paymar, Harris, and Malmuth, p. 18, we find this (emphasis in original):

1. Players must protect their own hands at all times. This
may be the most important rule in all of poker. A hand may be declared
"dead" if even one card touches the muck or if another player's card touches a
hand that is not protected.... Although the dealer should be aware of only
mucking discarded hands, a player who fails to take reasonable means to protect
his or her hand usually has no recourse if the hand becomes fouled or if the
dealer accidentally collects an unprotected hand.

While it is not necessary for the winner of a pot to show the hand if there
were no callers, it is suggested that the player protect the winning hand until
the dealer is actually pushing the pot to him. The dealer should not ask the
player to relinquish the winning hand before pushing the pot.

I read this shortly before attending poker dealer's school, and it changed how I do things. I now habitually hang on to my down cards until the pot is coming my way (if I'm the winner, or think I am). That way, if the pot is heading to somebody else by mistake, I still have a live hand I can show to claim it. I look at the transaction as a trade: my cards for the pot. Since starting this practice, I have twice accidentally mucked the winning hand (by misreading the board--until it was too late), but I have never had to forfeit a pot that was rightfully mine because of releasing my cards prematurely and letting the dealer muck them before the pot was pushed, or because the dealer uncorrectably pushed the pot to the wrong person. Retaining the cards makes any such error easily correctable.*

The same concept is expressed in Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 75, rule 11.10:

A player with a hand he believes to be the winning hand is responsible to
hold onto his own hand until the pot is awarded. No player with an interest in
the pot should release his hand to the dealer until his portion of the pot has
been pushed to him.

Kreiger and Bykofsky use nearly identical language in their Rules of Poker, p. 140, rule 5.22:

A player holding what he believes to be the winning hand should retain his hand
until the pot is awarded. A player with an interest in the pot should not
release his hand until the dealer pushes the pot, or his portion of the pot, to
him.

Finally, we have "Robert's Rules of Poker," most recently Version 10 (found at numerous places around the Web, such as http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/rrpprinter.php):

Cards speak (cards read for themselves). The dealer assists in reading hands,
but players are responsible for holding onto their cards until the winner is
declared.

So in terms of the rules and how they apply here, this wasn't even a close call. Player A in today's incident was just a guy who made a mistake--two mistakes, actually (not noticing that his bet had been called, then throwing away his hand before the dealer pushed him the pot) and was looking to place the blame everywhere except where it belonged--squarely on himself.

Player B rightly got the pot--not necessarily by having the best hand (because we don't know who did), but by having the only hand turned face-up on the table after the final bet and call. I was glad that he didn't apologize or appear to feel guilty over the decision going his way (as it had to, under the circumstances). He did nothing wrong--at least as far as the rules are concerned. (Making that call with his hand was pretty questionable, though!)

Player A, if you're reading this, I have a message for you: I hope that you learned a valuable lesson today. It only cost you about $240 or so--chump change for a guy who is used to playing for tens of thousands at a time, as you claim to do. Maybe it will save you from losing a pot back home in your Big Game there, and you'll come to see it as having been a cheap piece of education. Pity that in all your years of playing for such high stakes, you never bothered to learn some of the most basic rules of the game.


*Incidentally, dealers are supposed to award the pot before killing the winning hand, just to prevent that kind of problem, but unfortuntely many don't follow that correct sequence. Sooner or later, players who don't hold on to their cards until receiving the pot will lose one in an ugly controversy such as today's incident became.

Favoritism? No, it's just the rule, moron

So today I'm at my favorite hangout, the Hilton, playing $3-6 limit while waiting for a no-limit seat to open up. One of the other players is Myron, a sweet octogenarian (I think I heard him tell somebody he's 83) who is a regular there. Rachel, perhaps my favorite dealer anywhere (smart, funny, interesting, unflappable, accurate, consistent about rule enforcement, attentive to detail--what more can you ask a dealer to be?), is in the box. Myron is on the button, but after the flop he mistakenly thinks he's first to act, and puts out a $3 bet. It is pointed out to him that it's not his turn, so he takes it back. The player who is rightly first to act bets $3, and is called by a young guy who just sat down on my right. (I'm not in the hand.) When the action gets back to Myron, he raises to $6. Guy on my right protests, saying that he can't do that; since he bet $3 out of turn, all he can do in turn is the same $3, which would now be a call.

Rachel politely corrects this young man's impression, and says that Myron can, indeed, raise in these circumstances. The young man gets unusually upset at this point, and insists that the rules only allow the $3 call here. Rachel correctly calls the floor over (Irving) and explains the situation. Irving confirms that Myron can raise. (It would be clear to any observer that Myron is a regular and known by name by all the staff--a detail that is about to become important.) Rather than accept this ruling, the guy on my right says, "Oh, you all know each other, that's great."

At the end of her down, Rachel went above and beyond the call of duty by stopping at this guy's seat and quietly offering to explain the rule in more detail, explicitly saying that she didn't want him to be left with the impression that it was favoritism operating. He declined and brushed her off. So he didn't learn anything.

I realize that there's not a snowball's chance in hell that that guy will ever read these words. But I'll feel better for putting it out into the ether anyway. (And, besides, maybe somebody else reading doesn't understand the rule, and can learn a little something.) So here it is: Action out of turn is binding if, and only if, there has been no intervening change in the action between when the out of turn player erroneously acted and when it actually becomes his turn. In this instance, if everybody had checked around to Myron, then he indeed would have been committed to his previous and untimely $3 bet. But the early-position player's bet changed the action. Myron was now free to fold, call, or raise.

Consider the lunacy of the young man's logic under other conditions. Suppose that before the action got to Myron, there was a bet, a raise, and a reraise. By this guy's logic, Myron could still only put in $3, which wouldn't be enough to call. It's absurd.

The purpose of the rule is to prevent angle-shooters from deliberately pretending to put in a bet or raise in order to inhibit action. That is, particularly in a no-limit game, somebody might want to try to scare opponents who are to act before him into not betting by "accidentally" firing a big bet out of turn, then, when everybody checks to him, he checks, too, thus getting himself a free card that he might otherwise have had to call a bet to see. The rule obligates him to the action that he took out of turn. But once somebody acting in turn shows by betting that they're not afraid of the possibility of a call or raise behind, there would be no purpose in forcing the out-of-turn actor to repeat his action in turn.

For the genuinely accidental action, the rule also makes sense. If I erroneously think I'm first to act, I might want to bet. But if instead I see a bet and a bunch of calls and/or reraises, well, that changes everything, and the situation no longer looks like a good one for a bet, so the rule doesn't punish me for my inadvertant error, and I can fold (or raise, or call).

This rule is, as far as I know, universally recognized. Here, for example, is "Robert's Rules of Poker" (available many places, including http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/rrpprinter.php), under "Betting and Raising," #11: "An action or verbal declaration out of turn is binding unless the action to that player is subsequently changed by a bet or raise." Cooke's "Rules of Real Poker," 10.08, on p. 67, says, "A player who makes action out of turn shall be held to that action when it is his turn, unless intervening action changes the action the out-of-turn player is facing." Lou Krieger's new "The Rules of Poker," p. 84, says, "A player acting out of turn will also be held to his or her verbal declaration unless intervening bets or raises change the action faced by the out-of-turn player."

In short, this young guy was, well, insane. Instead of considering the possibility that he might just be wrong about the rules, he leaped to the conclusion that the poker room staff was conspiring against him and in favor of a regular player. Then, rather than accept a kind offer (after he had cooled down a bit) for a more thorough explanation of the situation and the applicable rule, he blew it off, preferring to maintain his paranoid fantasy.

People are funny creatures, in how they are so confident about things they really know nothing about, and in how they will actively choose to remain ignorant, and in how they love to see conspiracy all around when, objectively it isn't there. (No doubt this guy was followed by a squadron of black helicopters on his way home.)

Clonie Gowen is a cheater

I was just watching "Poker After Dark" on NBC, a re-run of the "Ladies Night" special, featuring six female professional players, including Clonie Gowen, one of the best-known female players on the tournament circuit.

I was astonished to hear her relate a story of winning a pot even though she held the ace of spades, and, before the hand was complete, another player mucked his hand face-up, and in the process showed another ace of spades. Her clear obligation in this situation is to alert the dealer. The floor person will be called over, the hand is dead, everybody gets their money back, and the next hand goes on as if the one in question never occurred (with a new deck of cards, obviously). But instead of doing that, Gowen quietly took the pot, then told the dealer to replace the deck (apparently without specifying why that should be done).

This is cheating, pure and simple.

I just posted the following question in the "Ask the pros" section at Full Tilt Poker (where Gowen is one of the resident professionals) and on Gowen's own site, in the "Ask a question" feature. My guess is that it will be pointedly ignored in both places, and possible deleted. But it needs to be asked anyway.

******

On “Poker After Dark,” you told the story of winning a pot (in a tournament, I presume) even though you had become aware during the play of the hand that the deck was fouled (because there were two aces of spades present). The standard rules of poker clearly prohibit this. For example, Bob Ciaffone’s “Robert’s Rules of Poker” says, under “Irregularities”:
“4. If two cards of the same rank and suit are found, all action is void, and all chips in the pot are returned to the players who wagered them (subject to next rule).
“5. A player who knows the deck is defective has an obligation to point this out. If such a player instead tries to win a pot by taking aggressive action (trying for a freeroll), the player may lose the right to a refund, and the chips may be required to stay in the pot for the next deal.”
Roy Cooke’s “Rules of Real Poker,” p. 105, says:

“14.12. Fouled Deck…. When a fouled deck is discovered, all betting will cease and all money in the pot shall be returned to the players in the hand. If this information is available to only one player and that player attempts to win the pot by initiating action, that player shall forfeit all rights to the pot and all chips in the pot shall be divided among all active players at the time the fouled deck is discovered.”

Similarly, Paymar, Harris, and Malmuth, in “The Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook” (2nd edition, p. 23) say that “a duplicate card…immediately fouls the deck, and all monies are returned to all players who received cards at the beginning of that hand…. If a player knowingly tries to win the pot with a fouled deck then he has a dead hand and forfeits all rights to the pot and all monies involved.”

In short, by every standard that I can find, you cheated. Worse, you openly advised people listening to your story to do the same--be sure they get the pot pushed to them before telling the dealer to replace the deck.

Were you to claim that you did not know such rules existed, I would find such an assertion implausible. At the very least, a player of your experience absolutely should have known to call over a floor person to make a decision on what to do, rather than keeping the information—and the pot—to yourself.

How can you justify cheating? Why do you advise others to cheat?

Tap, tap, tap

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with players who absentmindedly tap their hand and/or chips on the table when they're thinking about what to do. It looks like a check, and other players behind them should be entitled to interpret it as a check. Unfortunately, most dealers are much more lenient about this that I think they should be.

A couple of weeks ago at the Sahara this happened. A very drunk guy, when it was his turn, tapped on the table with his right hand. It was a situation where I really needed a free card, so I was happy to check behind him. But after I did so, the drunk guy pushed a stack of chips in. I protested to the dealer that he had checked. The dealer said he didn't see it, so I re-enacted for him what the player had done. The dealer asked, "So he tapped with his right hand?" Yes. Well, it turns out that this particular player is a frequent flyer at the Sahara, and he always checks by tapping his left hand, palm flat, on the table (which I confirmed thereafter by watching him). So the dealer says that it wasn't a check--as if it is my responsibility to know the exact personal style of checking of every other player at the table, and thereby separate idle hand movements from actual, intentional checks. Ridiculous.

To quote from Roy Cooke's wonderful "Real Rules of Poker" (p. 68, rule 10.12): "The dealer and other players shall have the right to rely on a player's hand motions. Any tapping of the table or other hand signal that the dealer might reasonably construe to be a check shall be deemed a check." That's how it should be, of course.

Want an example of what a huge difference it can make?

Recently at the Hilton I had an offsuit AJ, with the A of spades. There was a pre-flop raise to $15 or so, which I called--along with 6 other people, so it was already a big pot even before the flop. The flop was all spades, giving me the top flush draw. A player a few seats to my right was supposed to act first. He tapped his hand on the table, and I couldn't tell if it was a "just thinking" tap or a check. Just as he reached for his whole stack and put it in the pot, the dealer said, "Was that a check?"

Now, I certainly didn't want him going all-in, because I couldn't possibly call such a large bet, in the hopes of catching another spade. I wanted a free card very badly. The player said, "No, I'm all in!" I spoke up and said, "It looked like a check to me." The dealer agreed, and made him take his bet back. Everybody else checked, too.

The turn card was another spade, and I had the best possible flush. This dummy then *still* decides to go all-in! As it turned out, he had pocket 9s, and the 9 of spades had been there on the flop, giving him a set--no wonder he had wanted to bet big, to take down the pot right then, without giving anybody a chance to draw to a flush to beat him. His tapping was just his internal debate about whether that was the thing to do. But even with four spades on the board, he couldn't let go of it. To make things better, the guy to my right made a jack-high flush with that turn card, and he went all-in! And, as you might guess, so did I. With what was already there before the flop and our 3 all-ins, the pot ended up being about $500.

That little idle motion with his hand while he was thinking cost that guy nearly $200. And I don't feel one bit guilty about calling him on it. Rules are rules, and the fact that I'm usually willing to be lenient when there's some doubt about his intentions doesn't mean I have to be every time. I'm extremely careful not to take any actions or make any motions that might confuse or mislead another player, or cause somebody behind me to act out of turn, and if others have to learn the hard way about paying attention to what they're doing, so be it. I've got bills to pay.

Now if we could just get dealers to be vigilant on this point, and enforce the rule consistently.

Fortunately, some do. A couple of weeks ago at Caesars Palace, there was a guy who was habitually doing the "I'm thinking" tap when it was his turn. Twice it caused people behind him to take their turns prematurely, and twice the dealers (different ones each time) called back those actions and let the tapper still decide whether to check or bet.

Finally there was a third such incident, unfortunately with yet another a new dealer, but fortunately with a dealer that was watching closely. He saw the tap, announced "Check," and gestured toward the next player. Mr. Tapper protested that he hadn't acted yet. The dealer explained that it looked like a check, but he would allow him this one warning. I spoke up and said that the same player had already been warned twice by previous dealers, which another player confirmed. Usually, this doesn't get anywhere (except maybe the floor called over for a decision), because obviously the dealer can't know what did or didn't happen prior to his arrival at the table. But this guy, bless him, took it seriously, and said, "In that case, we're going to have to let that stand as a check." The tapper didn't protest further. And, significantly, he didn't do it again. People are capable of learning quickly, if it costs them money. If they're allowed to slide repeatedly, they tend not to learn.