Strange rule at Harrah's Cherokee

I was at Harrah's Cherokee over the weekend. While I was waiting in line at the cashier, I noticed this list of house rules on one of the monitors. Look at the third one.

I suppose banning Google Glass has some rationale, because one might theoretically use it to beam images of one's cards to somebody outside the game and surreptitiously get advice on how to play via an earbud. But I'm unable to come up with a justification for banning "smart watches."

Any plausible ideas?

PokerNews article #80

Long piece on all the new poker tournament rules announced last week.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/new-poker-tournament-rules-you-need-to-know-22655.htm

The importance of bright-line rules

I had not previously heard of or seen the phenomenon that Lee Jones discusses in this excellent blog post--calling an all-in bet by just tossing out a single chip instead of a stack. But he effectively shows why this new fad should be definitively disallowed, and in the process has some good words about the function of rules in keeping the game fun and fair.

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/en/blog/lee_jones_journal/2015/rules-keep-the-game-fun-154041.shtml

WSOP controversy

Here's an interesting story of a dispute at the WSOP and how it was resolved (probably badly), from Barny Boatman, whom I would judge to be well above average in reliability in recounting the pertinent facts.

http://pokermob.com/poker-forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=240

Open-face Chinese poker problem (quasi-poker content!)

Cardgrrl's house is now finished and she has moved in. Last night I was over there for dinner and recreation. I taught her how to play OFC poker. I've only played once before for money, though a few days ago I bought an app for my Android phone and have been playing some no-money games with friends around the country. So my experience with the game is not quite zero, but pretty close to it. Which means that situations I haven't seen or thought of are going to come up from time to time.

Last night, for example, I ended up making this hand:

Cardgrrl had fouled her hand, so I potentially had a big score here--a scoop plus a royalty for the full house. But neither of us knew whether this hand was valid or fouled because both the top and middle had J-10-7. And it's not like Cardgrrl has a few Chinese Poker rule books sitting around the house that we could consult.

So I posted the picture on Twitter and asked for opinions from those with more experience playing. I was surprised but pleased that the answers I got were unanimous: It's a valid hand.

But then that just made me wonder why it's valid. Is it because:

(A) Jack of spades is a higher card than jack of hearts?

(B) The two hands are considered equal, and being equal is valid?

(C) The middle hand is J-10-7-5-4, which is better than just J-10-7 on top?

Here Twitter delivered some variability in the explanation, with all three possible rationales getting at least one nod. But the answers from the most experienced players were consistently (B). Apparently two hands tying is as valid as the stronger one being below the weaker one. So, for instance, if you happen to make a seven-high straight on both the back and the middle, that's a legitimate hand, not fouled. To put it another way, I had been under the impression that each hand must be stronger than the one above it, but the actual rule is that no hand can be stronger than the one below it--which is not quite the same thing.

So now you know. (Or maybe, unlike me, you already did.)



BONUS SUBJECT AND PHOTO:

Both Cardgrrl and I had long been wanting a cat but were in living situations where it could not happen. As you know by now, I remedied that very soon after moving in to my apartment. (If you want to watch a couple of stupid videos of me playing "cat hockey" with my darling Lucy, see here and here. Do not expect cinematic epicness.)

Well, on Saturday Cardgrrl also cured her catlessness. She went to one of the local animal shelters and brought home a tiny bundle of feline furriness named Loki. He is, as she accurately puts it, ALL OF THE CUTENESS ALL OF THE TIME. My guess is that if you did a chemical analysis of him, he would turn out to be 99% cuteness and 1% carbon/nitrogen/oxygen. See more of Loki's sweetness here.

Here's the three of us last night posing for a selfie:

Survey question: How adorable are we?

1. Very.
2. Extremely.
3. Super-duper.
4. OMG!

What I want to shout

Sometimes I'm seated at a poker table where attention to proper procedure by both the dealer and the other players is so lax that after a while I feel like going all Walter Sobchak on the place:

String theory

At Mandalay Bay today I saw what I thought was an interesting situation that called into question the way I have thought of the string-bet rule.

A player had all of his chips in two stacks. He was first to act on the river. He picked up one stack with his left hand and moved it forward. Without letting go of it, he then moved the second stack forward with his right hand, with it ending up next to the first stack, and then he released both of them at the same time.

Was this a legitimate all-in move, or an illegal string bet?

I asked this on Twitter and got quite a variety of responses:

If you think the answer is perfectly obvious one way or the other, then consider these variations.

1. Does it matter to you if the interval between the forward motion of the two stacks is, say, 10 seconds versus half of a second?

2. What if he verbalizes "all in" between the two motions?

3. Does your answer change if the first stack was all of his red ($5) chips, and the second stack was all of his blue ($1) chips?

4. Does your answer change with the size of the second stack, i.e., a big stack of 30 chips versus one or two stragglers?

I do not like having the application of a rule depend on discerning a player's intention, because (1) it's too subjective a process, and (2) the process can be abused and manipulated by experienced players to their advantage.

Here, however, I'm forced to conclude that there is no way to do anything but attempt to figure out his intention. If he was betting, say, close to $200 with the first stack, and had left behind just one blue chip, and it appeared that he noticed it only after he had already moved the first stack into position and was doing his best to rectify his oversight, and he did so almost instantly, it's hard to assign to him any angle-shooting motivation. But the more you stretch any or all of those parameters, the murkier his intentions become.

If he had two equal stacks of red chips, and clearly paused for a long time to think after moving the first one forward, then we have to conclude that he did not form the mental intention of putting himself all-in before he started his move.

In between those rather clear-cut cases on either end of the spectrum, it's all kind of murky.

It's easy to pontificate that if he hasn't verbalized his action first, then if he is using both hands to move chips, they have to be synchronized. But that just moves us to the question of exactly how perfectly synchronized they have to be. We humans aren't capable of actual simultaneity. Shoot a sufficiently high-speed video of the action and you'll find some discrepancy, even if only tiny fractions of a second. It would be absurd to write the rule in a way that requires the two stacks to hit their final resting point within some precise interval of time of each other. But if you're not going to do that, and yet you agree that some intervals are short enough to be OK as an all-in while others are too long to deserve that supposition, then you've necessarily reduced it to a subjective judgment call.

What actually happened today was that the first stack was all of his red chips, and the second was all of his blue chips. But they were roughly equal, maybe 25 or so of each. So he couldn't have just overlooked the second stack. Furthermore, he paused briefly with his left hand on the first stack after having moved it forward, announced, "All in," then picked up the second stack with his right hand and moved it next to the first before releasing both of them. I think that what happened was that at first glance he thought that his red chips alone were enough to cover his opponent's stack, but then he realized a beat too late that the two of them might be closer in total chips behind than he thought, and he probably shouldn't leave his blue chips out of the bet, so he did a quick mid-move correction.

In other words, it makes no sense to attribute to him any actual ugly angle-shooting, because the difference in the total amount of the bet was not enough that it would make much difference in an opponent's decision. Furthermore, his mid-move correction came quickly enough that he couldn't have been trying to gauge his opponent's reaction before deciding whether to add more chips to his bet. But it also wasn't just the classic "oops I meant to go all in but I forgot the one blue chip that I'm using as a card cap." He had a real change of mind, I think, but one that didn't actually alter the situation by very much.

Because of that, I think a reasonable argument can be made to let the bet stand (because it changed the absolute amount of the bet by a fairly small percentage, not enough to plausibly affect whether an opponent would call), AND a reasonable argument can be made to make him take back the second stack (because he probably did not start his move with the intention of including it).

The dealer didn't hesitate at all. She disallowed the second stack. Nobody argued the point, and I was probably the only one that thought it even pointed to an interesting question.

Another strange rule at Mandalay Bay

How many times have I used some variation on that post title? About a dozen, I'd guess. Every time I think I have come across every oddball rule in their book (a book, incidentally, which players are not allowed to see), I'm wrong, and there is another to be discovered. It's like they have an inexhaustible horn-o'-plenty of weird house rules.

I was there last night. I got into a hand against a regular local. I had 5-5 and position. He raised, I called. Flop JJ8. He bet, I called. Turn 2. He checked, I bet, he called. River queen. His check-call on the turn had made me think that he might have missed the flop but still have a higher pocket pair than mine, like 7s or 9s--and if he didn't, then that queen on the end might have done me in, so I checked behind on the river.

I waited for him to show his cards. He didn't, instead pointing at me and saying, "I called your bet." Before I could say anything, the dealer intervened, telling him that since the last round of betting had no action, showdown went in clockwise order from small blind to button. That is indeed the standard rule.

But this guy insisted that Mandalay's house rule is different, and when there is no betting on fifth street, first to show is whoever took the last aggressive action (bet or raise) on a previous betting round. This player has enough time in the chair that I thought he could easily be right, so I kept mum and let the dealer handle it. The player insisted that the dealer call the floor. He did so. Floor confirmed. I have heard that casinos in Europe tend to follow this practice, but it is not the standard way in the U.S.

Anyway, I showed my 5s. He then showed his A-Q and took the pot.

In terms of that hand, my consolation is that at every point where I was ahead, I put money into the pot, and when I wasn't, I didn't. That's how it's supposed to be, right?

In terms of the rule, there's a follow-up discussion to be had. Readers with elephantine memories may recall that I wrote about a similar situation, also occurring at Mandalay Bay, in one of my very earliest blog posts, on November 9, 2006, when this blog had existed for less than two weeks.

But I got things wrong in that post. I've known this for a long, long time. Probably within a year of having written it I had gained enough additional experience at the tables to know that I had made a mistake. Once in a while a situation at the table would remind me of it and I'd think that I should publish a correction, but then I never got around to it. Today I repent of that ongoing neglect.

In that situation, there was no betting on the last round because I had moved all-in on the flop, and my only opponent had called. Back then, my understanding was that such a situation was functionally equivalent of there voluntarily being no betting on the last round, even though both (or all) players still in the hand have chips left and could bet if they wanted to. Furthermore, my reading of Cooke's rule book did nothing to dissuade me from that view. His wording seems to support it, though it's not explicit. (See that old post for the citation.)

Krieger and Bykofsky's The Rules of Poker is also ambiguous about whether these two situations should be handled the same way. From page 135, rule 5.18:

On the final betting round, the last player who actively bet or raised the pot (and was then called) is required to show his hand first. Once he shows his hand, other players reveal their down-cards in clockwise order. If all the remaining players check on the final round, the showdown begins with the player who is seated to the left of the dealer in community-card games such as hold'em and Omaha, and the player whose board requires him to act first in stud games.

I can't tell for sure what these authors' meaning is for situations like the one I described in 2006, when there is no betting on the river because there are no more chips left to bet. The first sentence seems to imply that the question reverts to whoever made the last aggressive action on a previous street. But even that is not really clear because of the introductory phrase, "On the final betting round." It could be that the wording of their rule is unclear because they just didn't anticipate that specific question. (I think that is the most likely explanation for Cooke, too.)

Robert's Rules of Poker, though, is explicit on this point:

If everyone checks (or is all-in) on the final betting round, the player who acted first is the first to show the hand. If there is wagering on the final betting round, the last player to take aggressive action by a bet or raise is the first to show the hand.

So he plainly makes the two situations (i.e., no betting on the last round by choice or because there is no more action possible) equivalent.

My experience, however, is that the uniform practice in Vegas poker rooms is that an all-in and call prior to what would otherwise be the last round of betting means that the showdown order reverts to that final action, and the aggressor shows before the caller. Except, apparently, at Mandalay Bay.

Back in 2006 I was right about the point that this is how Mandalay does it, but I was wrong about that being the standard practice. M.B. is, in fact, the odd man out, as it is on so many other small points of poker order. I have long known that I got that post wrong about what the standard practice is (and I'm now embarrassed to see how I spoke of the benighted fools who were not nearly as savvy as I). I had come to assume that what the floor supervisor told me that day was simply an error. What I learned last night is that he was correct--but only because Mandalay's house rule is different from the standard rule.

Stud rule

Yesterday I played the weekly Friday noon HORSE tournament at the Orleans. Went out mid-pack, nothing exciting.

During one stud hand, the player to my right turned his up card face down, but then looked like he might be second-guessing himself and wishing he had played it. I ignored this and went on with my action, which was to complete the bring-in bet. The next player's cards were in the muck as soon as my chips were out.

At this point, the dealer held up his hand to stop further action, saying, "The action is still back here," pointing to the player to my right. I thought that was peculiar, but decided to wait until the hand was over to inquire about it. Player to my right folded, and the hand played out.

When it was over with, I asked the dealer, "Wasn't his hand dead as soon as he turned his up card face down?" The dealer said, "No, I don't think so. But I'll ask." He called the floor over, though appropriately continued dealing the next hand so as not to make everyone wait.

He was surprised that the floor confirmed my impression, and apologized for having been wrong.

So today I'm looking in my rule books to be sure that my memory on this point was indeed the standard rule. It is.

Krieger and Bykofsky, Rules of Poker, page 178:

7.3.10 MIXING OPEN AND CLOSED CARDS

Turning an open card or cards face down, or commingling open and closed cards together is tantamount to holding. The hand is dead.

Cooke and Bond, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, page 25:

5.17. SEVEN-CARD STUD: TURNING UPCARDS DOWN; MIXING UPCARDS AND DOWNCARDS

A player who turns upcards facedown or mixes upcards and holecards together when facing a bet is deemed to have folded and his hand shall be declared dead.

So if you're ever playing seven-card stud (or razz, or stud-8) and are faced with the same kind of situation I was--the player on your right has turned his up card face down but has not yet returned his cards to the dealer for some reason--you can safely proceed as if it is your turn, because it is. His hand is as dead as if his cards were already in the muck.

Stupid rule

I was playing at Mandalay Bay tonight. Over time, one just comes to accept that MB has a bunch of bizarre house rules that don't make any sense. I thought I had heard them all (and documented them all in these pages as I encountered them). Nope. Tonight I learned of one that had previously escaped my notice.

I was in seat 6. During a hand in which the button was on seat 7, the guy in seat 1, having just taken an ugly beat, stormed away from the table with his few remaining chips. Nobody else had requested a seat change, so I moved to 1. Next hand, the button is on seat 8, seats 9 and 10 are the blinds, and I am under the gun. As he started dealing, the dealer said something about putting out $2. I wasn't completely sure he was talking to me, and assumed that if he were, he was simply mistaken. I.e., he had erroneously thought I was the big blind, or failed to notice the direction around the table that I had moved. So I didn't do anything.

As he delivered my second card, he more pointedly said, "You need to post because you changed seats." I pointed out that I was moving toward the blinds, not away from them; i.e., I would be paying the blinds sooner than I would have if I had stayed put (on the next hand, in fact). He insisted that that was their house rule--moving past more than two other players required posting, no matter which direction one moved.

Even if the dealer were correct about this being a house rule, he should have given me the option to post or wait one hand for the big blind. (I would have chosen the latter, of course.) But now that the situation was upon us, I didn't want to slow down the game for everybody else by asking for the floor person to come over and address the issue, so I just tossed in the $2 then folded my crappy cards after somebody raised. As poker room annoyances go, this one merited one roll of the eyes, but nothing more dramatic than that.

The usual rule in Vegas poker rooms is that if you move past one or two players in either direction, it's a freebie. If you move past more than two players in the direction that delays when you will pay your next set of blinds, then you have to post the equivalent of the big blind, or wait until the big blind comes around to you. But if you move into the blinds, so that you will be paying them sooner than you otherwise would have, no posting is required. I have never before encountered a situation in which moving towards the blinds requires early posting.

An hour or so later as I was leaving, I pulled the shift supervisor aside to ask if the dealer had been correct. She confirmed that he had been; their house rule is that one must post the big blind (or wait for it), no matter which direction one moves, if it is more than two seats. I suggested to her that this was non-standard and probably unique among Vegas poker rooms. She allowed as how that was probably true.

Upon arriving home, I checked my rule books and confirmed that it is indeed non-standard. Here's Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, The Rules of Poker (Lyle Stuart, 2006), pp. 32-33:

For moving counterclockwise (toward the blinds and against the flow of the dealer button), jumping over intermediate players to the new seat: There is no penalty for changing seats and the player who moves is entitled to receive a hand immediately.

For moving clockwise (away from the blinds and in the same direction as the flow of the dealer button): The player is required to sit out a number of hands equal to the number of players jumped over during the move.... If the player does not wish to wait out any hands, he may be dealt in immediately, provided he posts the big blind in his new seat.

Maybe some day somebody will explain to me why Mandalay Bay is such a maverick about idiosyncratic house rules. I really don't get what it is about the culture of that poker room that causes it to go against the grain on so many things. In almost every instance, the weird rule that they come up with is clearly, demonstrably worse than the standard practice everywhere else.* In this case, the standard rule about posting when moving away from the blinds exists to prevent nits from seat hopping frequently to avoid paying the blinds. (If you doubt that such uber-nits exist, you have not spent much time in Vegas casinos.) No comparable purpose is served by imposing the same requirement on a player moving the opposite direction. It's just stupid.

*The one exception is how they handle must-move games, which I discussed here. It is perfect, and is a system that should be imitated by all other poker rooms.

Binding?

Interesting rule dilemma about whether a conditional verbal declaration is binding, illustrated by a story from Rob:

http://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2012/07/verbal-is-binding.html

My rather lengthy comments are there, so I won't repeat them here.

Cards for pot--it's a trade

People, people, people--when will you ever learn? Do not muck what you believe to be the winning hand until the dealer pushes you the pot. This is not that difficult a concept. You gain nothing by trying to jump the gun and muck them the first instant you think the hand is over, and once in a while you'll lose a great deal, as illustrated by a story from yesterday at the WSOP:

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2012-world-series-of-poker/event-61-no-limit-hold-em-main-event/day5/post.208172.htm

(Hat tip: Hard-Boiled Poker.)

Annoying rule at Sandia

I forgot to tell you about an annoying rule I discovered playing last week at Sandia Casino in Albuquerque.

I was at a must-move table. After a few rounds, they called my name to move. I was in the small blind at the time. I assumed that I could stay one more hand and play my button. But no. The dealer said, "They've already called you for the must-move, so the button moves two spots." He wouldn't deal me in.

I asked, just to be sure: "You mean, even after paying both blinds, I can't stay one more hand for the button?"

He said, "No."

I said, "That's harsh."

He said, "Life is harsh."

I don't know of any other casino that is that strict on the timing of moving from a must-move table. As far as I can recall, when this has come up before, every other poker room I've been in has allowed the player to take the button before moving, after having paid both blinds.

Not a huge deal, obviously, but a small annoyance that they could so easily avoid.

Crazy hand at WSOP

If you're a poker rules nerd, you might enjoy these two separate write-ups of the nuttiest hand of WSOP 2012 so far:

http://www.pokerlistings.com/wsop/2012/event45/live-updates?day=2#live-update-35048

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2012-world-series-of-poker/event-45-the-poker-players-championship/post.206642.htm

(Note that in the first version, B.J. Nemeth makes a slight error by missing Shaun Deeb's flush, but the outcome is the same.)

Tropicana update

I was at the Tropicana today to see some friends who were involved in the weekend festivities celebrating the official designation of the Trop poker room as the Jamie Gold Poker Room.

I played in a cash game for a few hours. I was surprised to learn that they have had some rule changes. When Gold started playing there on salary, they instituted special rules for his games. Those rules have now been extended to all $1/2 no-limit hold'em games played in the room.

These include:

1. Straddle for any amount from any position. Action starts to the left of wherever the straddle is. I don't know how they resolve it if more than one person wants to straddle, as I never saw that come up.

2. If all betting is complete because players are all-in, they can agree to run the board (or whatever remains of it to be put out) twice. I assume three or four times is also OK, though I didn't ask that specifically.

3. Players are more free than usual to discuss their hands during play, though it's not clear to me exactly how far they have moved the boundary on this point.

4. No chopping the blinds. (I think this was actually not a Gold rule, but was put in place to address the lack of action when they started the pay-players-by-the-hour promotion. However it originated, it is now the standard.)

If today was any indication, these rule changes make for some wild games. Sitting down in the first one was like being yanked off my feet by a tornado. A couple of very aggressive players were trading off straddling every hand for $15 or more, then following that up with a big raise over any callers. Players frequently were all-in before the flop with hands that in a normal $1/2 game would have gotten no more than one standard raise.

My guess is that if they keep these rules in place for the long haul, the Trop poker room will develop a deserved reputation that its $1/2 NLHE game, while nominally the same as is spread in all of the other 50+ rooms in town, is actually an entirely different animal. If you decide to try it out, bring a lot of cash for rebuys, and prepare for maybe the highest variance you've ever encountered.

Another change: One of the dealers there, Shannon, heads up a "dealer's-choice" game on many weekends. They will now be standardizing that to every Monday night. That makes a lot of sense, since that tends to be a quiet night for other poker. It also won't conflict with the Sunday night mixer at Imperial Palace or the Tuesday night HORSE tournament at M Resort or the Wednesday night HORSE tournament at Green Valley Ranch or the two weekend HORSE tournaments at Orleans. In other words, mixed game enthusiasts can now find their favorite form of poker on a regular, scheduled basis almost every day of the week now.

Green Valley Ranch poker room management cheats at tournaments

Read this:

http://wastedacespoker.com/2011/12/03/green-valley-ranch-still-like-the-south/

Note that TDA rules clearly state that tournament seats must be "randomly" assigned.

Let's count the mistakes

I played at the Rio last night. When I was directed to a table, the only seat open was #2, so I took it. Good thing. It was so advantageous that in retrospect I'm astonished that nobody else there moved to it when it became available.

Its advantage was all about the guy in Seat 1. He was drunk out of his mind. A friend of his at the table said that he had had about 20 vodka/Red Bulls in the past five hours or so. At the rate he was downing them, I believed it.

He was the classic happy drunk--far more interested in socializing and commenting on everything else going on around him than the game. He always had to be pestered into taking his turn, always had to be told about five times to post his blinds, always had to be told what the action was, etc.

Of most importance to the story, he put zero effort into protecting his cards, despite multiple warnings from the dealer, me, and the other players. He never capped his cards with a chip or other object. This is an especially dangerous habit in the two seats next to the dealer, for two reasons. First, the dealer can sweep one's hole cards into the muck much faster and more easily than from other positions. Second, other players mucking their cards can accidentally run them into unprotected hole cards of Seats 1 and 9 (or 10), thus killing the hand. The other way he failed to protect his hand was that he just lifted his cards in front of his face with no attempt to conceal them. I could see them without even trying about half the time.

As it happened, he quickly developed a fear of playing a pot with me, so I made almost no money from him over the couple of hours we played together. In only one hand was my view of his hole cards potentially going to make a difference. He raised pre-flop with 7h-8h. I had A-Q offsuit and called. The flop missed both of us. He put in a continuation bet. Since I knew exactly what he had, it was an easy call. I didn't raise, because the only decent player at the table was still in it with us. He raised, which foiled my chance at playing the hand as a superuser. Drunk guy and I both folded.

OK, now we get to the crazy hand of the night.

Drunk guy was in the big blind, but, as usual, didn't know it, despite the dealer asking him to post a couple of times. I folded from under the gun. I saw one of drunk guy's cards, a jack. Seats 3 and 4 folded. Just about that time, drunk guy says, "All in." It wasn't his turn, obviously. He still hadn't even posted his blind. Seat 5 pushes his chip stacks forward. He must have heard the all-in announcement, because there's no way he would have just open-raised all-in for $135.

So the first mistake was drunk guy acting out of turn. Second mistake was the dealer not quickly stopping the action and clarifying that that declaration was out of turn and would be binding only if there was no raise in turn from any other player before action was properly back on Seat 1. Third mistake was Seat 5 not understanding all of this, and responding as if Seat 1's action had been in turn.

But wait, there's more!

The next player asked for a clarification of what the action was. The dealer told him that Seat 1 had gone all in out of turn, and Seat 5 was all in. He folded, as did everyone else. Then the dealer, apparently having forgotten what he had just said, looked down at Seat 1, saw unprotected cards and no chips out (he still hadn't posted his blind), and absent-mindedly swept Seat 1's cards into the muck. Let's call that mistake 4.

Drunk guy looks down, trying to figure out what happened, and says, "Hey, where's my cards?" Dealer immediately recognizes what he did. He calls for the floor. While he's looking away, trying to get the attention of the supervisor, drunk guy says loudly and repeatedly that he had had two jacks, and pulls two cards out of the muck that he thinks are his. He turns them face up: a jack and a deuce. He points to the deuce and says, "That one's wrong," and starts rummaging through the muck turning cards face up, trying to find his other jack. Finally the dealer notices what he's doing and puts a halt to it. Let's call this mistake 5.

Meanwhile, Seat 5 says, "Go ahead and find those jacks, see if you can beat this!" and triumphantly slams his pocket queens face up on the table. Mistake 6. Why invite your opponent to get a live hand that has a 20% chance of beating you if you might instead get his chips as a freeroll if he is deemed to be committed to the all-in with a dead hand? Of course, an opponent's approval of muck-fishing doesn't legalize it.

Floor comes over. The correct ruling, in my opinion, should be that Seat 1 is responsible only for the big blind. His out-of-turn declaration is no longer binding once Seat 5 puts in his raise. Since he never moved any chips into the pot, when the action is properly on him, he can call Seat 5's all in, or he can fold. With a dead hand, folding is the obvious thing that any sensible player would chose to do, given the option in that situation--lose the $3 big blind and hopefully learn a lesson from the close call. But instead, the floor rules that the out-of-turn all-in is, in fact, binding. Mistake 7.

Drunk guy accepts this ruling, but clearly does so thinking that he still get a chance to fight for the pot with his long-lost jacks. Mistake 8. Nope. Floor tells him it's a dead hand and instructs the dealer to take $135 from Seat 1 and give it to Seat 5.

Drunk guy is surprisingly sanguine about this. I expected an eruption, but it didn't happen. He quickly resigned himself to it, saying, "Whatever. I don't care. Fuck it."

Floor guy gave him a "final warning" about the f-bomb. (He had issued one previous warning, and the dealers had issued several.) Sadly, about 10 minutes later, one more effenheimer resulted in another call for the floor, and our friend being ejected from the room.

Strangely, this was an outcome that two other players had actively sought, complaining to the floor about how the drunk guy was slowing down the game. Which he was, obviously. But if you're there to make money, having a player like this booted from the game is absolutely the last thing you want to see happen.

When I cashed out later, I told the floor guy how I couldn't believe how short-sighted those other players had been in working to have Seat 1 kicked out. It was like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. He was sympathetic, and clearly knew exactly what was going on. He told me, "I know! I knew he was the action player in the game, so I tried to look the other way and let him keep playing for as long as I could."

Oh well. I made my money from the other players.

Verbal is binding. Or not.

Late last night I was playing at the Golden Nugget with two friends. Poker Lawyer was on my left, Jen across the table. (The ladies love me, ya know. P.L. even dropped trou for me before she left town. OK, it was via Twitter, but it still counts.)

I had 4d-5d on the button, and so joined a chorus of limpers. The flop was 9-4-5. P.L. checked, next guy bet. I think it was $11. I decided to just call. This was partly slow-playing, partly waiting to be sure P.L. wasn't going to put in a big check-raise after having flopped a set or bigger two pair. She folded, so I was heads-up.

Turn was another 4, filling me up. Guy checked. I bet $22. He called.

I don't remember the river card--a jack maybe? Anyway, it didn't seem to change anything. He checked. As I was reaching for chips, he said, "I call."

It's getting rare that I'm faced with a poker situation that is new to me and that I don't know what to do about. I was sufficiently confident of having the best hand that I would have been willing to get my whole stack into the pot if I thought I would get called. But would he actually call? I wasn't sure of that.

My first impulse was to ask the dealer to call the floor over and get a ruling on whether my opponent's call was binding. If it was, I'd move all-in. But in the roughly five seconds I took to think about my options, I decided it was most likely that the floor would decide his declaration was done out of turn and was therefore not binding, and the very process of trying to get him hooked for his whole stack on that basis would show him how badly I wanted a call, he'd fold, and I'd end up with nothing.

I decided instead to proceed as if he hadn't said anything. I made a standard-sized value bet, about 2/3 of the pot ($45), and he called. He flashed a 9 before mucking.

The questions raised are: (1) If I had stopped the action after he said, "I call" but before taking my turn, what should the floor decide? I.e., is he committed to calling whatever I bet up to the full amount of his stack? (2) Strategically, what is the best way for me to have handled that--as I did, or take a chance on the floor saying that he is committed to a call no matter what I bet, which wins me his stack, or some other approach that I haven't thought of?

I think if he had been deeper, I would have taken a shot at the floor ruling. But as it was, his river call was for about half of what he had left, which means that the potential gain wasn't a lot more than I stood to make from ignoring his words.

He was a very experienced player. He demonstrated thorough understanding of the rules of the game. He knew how the blinds changed when players moved in or out of the game, for instance. In fact, the way he talked early in the session had made me think he was likely an off-duty poker dealer, though I never got explicit confirmation of this. I feel about 99% confident that this was not an accidentally premature call on his part. I think it is much more likely that it was essentially a verbal version of the grabbing-a-stack move I discussed recently, here. He has probably either done this himself on previous occasions or seen it done, and has reason to believe that if it comes to a floor decision it will be ruled non-binding. If so, then I would label it as angle-shooting, a way of pretending to call without actually committing any chips.

I understand that before I got into poker, a common angle-shot was this: a player wanting to inhibit a bet or raise from somebody to his right would announce "raise" out of turn, but then check or call when action actually got to him. That was quashed by instituting the rule that out-of-turn action would be binding if the action to the player in question did not change between when he announced his action and when it became his turn.

If applied here, that would probably not commit my opponent, because, the argument would go, in between his verbal announcement and when he had to actually make his decision, the action had changed by virtue of my bet.

So I'm still not sure what the ruling would be if I pressed for one, nor how I should have handled the situation. I'd like to get it figured out before the next time I'm faced with it.

Addendum, October 31, 2011

I asked Matt Savage via Twitter how he would rule in this situation. He replied:

cash game rules vary, I can guarantee you I am charging him something to get him to stop this angle, probably size of turn bet.

in tournaments the @PokerTDA has added a rule for conditional statements so we have latitude to make him call your whole bet.

He is referring to this rule, added earlier this year:

47: Conditional Statements

Conditional statements regarding future action are strongly discouraged; they may be binding and/or subject to penalty. Example: “if – then” statements such as "If you bet, then I will raise”.

I knew of this change but hadn't thought of applying it here. But on consideration, it does seem pretty reasonable (if you ignore the cash game/tournament distinction). His statement was functionally equivalent to "If you bet, I will call."

Thanks to Matt for his quick response.

Epic Poker got some splainin' to do

You've probably heard a thing or two about the Epic Poker League and its out-of-the-gate problems with ethics and qualifications. Between Chino Rheem winning the first event and the controversy surrounding Michael DiVita's exit, a whole lot of questions were raised about the league's much-ballyhooed code of conduct.

In an apparent attempt to address such questions, Stephen Martin, ethics consultant to the league, granted an interview to Jess Welman of Bluff magazine, which was published a few days ago here. I read it last night, and at the end had more questions than answers. (I expect that this has been hashed out ad nauseum in places like Two Plus Two, but I have not read any of that. What follows is just my own reactions.)

The first uncertainty with which I was left was whether DiVita's withdrawal was actually voluntary on his part, as Martin takes pains to insist, or involuntary. DiVita submitted a comment to the Martin interview which, taken at face value, contradicts Martin's account. DiVita speaks of the Standards and Conduct Committee's "decision," while Martin is claiming that no decision was made: "[W]e didn’t take any official action since Mr. DiVita chose to withdraw."

But if Martin is telling the truth about that, then it's hard to understand his answer to the final question:

If Mr. DiVita wants to take part, he would have to request eligibility from the league based on his criminal history. We’ve set up a process where people can request a hearing and appear in front of the Standards and Conduct Committee and ultimately appeal to the Commissioner if they feel like regarding eligibility issues or for disciplinary action. If he wanted to play in our league going forward, he would have to go through that process…There is no guarantee that someone will be eligible to play.

DiVita was presumably eligible to play when he played. If the committee made no decision and took no action, then logically it must be the case that DiVita's eligibility remains intact and he would be able to show up and play at any Epic event anytime he wanted to do so. How can it simultaneously be true that the committee/league made no decision and took no action on his eligibility to play, and that if he chose to play in the future he would have to first request eligibility via a hearing?

Secondly, I'm puzzled by a set of apparent contradictions. First, Martin claims that past conduct, criminal or otherwise, will not be considered disqualifying unless it affects the league in some sort of ongoing manner:

Initially when the league and the Standards and Conduct Committee were formed, we made a general decision not to take action against players for pre-league conduct and things that happened before the league was founded, with some exceptions. One [exception] being that if an action by a player was so severe or significant that we needed to take a look at those issues or something that had an ongoing impact on the league after it started.

Yet there is no explanation of why DiVita's convictions from 20 years ago, nor his arrest (with charges subsequently dropped) in 2008, have "an ongoing impact on the league after it started." Why does Mike Matusow get a pass for his conviction on drug-trafficking charges, but DiVita has to answer for his far older convictions? Is it because the latter are categorized as sex crimes, and Epic Poker has made an institutional decision that sex crimes are worse than drug crimes? If so, where is that determination to be found in the EPL's documents?

Speaking of the league's documents, you can view online the "Players' Code of Conduct." It includes this laudable sentiment:

While criminal conduct is clearly outside the scope of permissible professional conduct (and persons who engage in serious criminal conduct are subject to League discipline), our standard of conduct as professional poker players is considerably higher. It is not simply enough to avoid being convicted of a serious criminal offense.

OK, great. But it's hard to imagine a squishier, more flexible standard than that.

Let's consider the EPL's commissioner, Annie Duke. The first time I heard of her, I believe, was when I read James McManus's great book, Positively Fifth Street. He documents having witnessed Duke picking up another player's cards from the muck and looking at them (page 181) during a satellite to the WSOP Main Event. Even though I was a novice at the game when I read that, I knew that such an action constituted a major breach of both rules and etiquette. Why does the EPL have a known cheater as its commissioner, if the standard of conduct is as high as this Code of Conduct implies?

And what about her criminal connection? She was a paid representative of Ultimate Bet both before and after the UIGEA passed in 2006. What's more, she renewed her position with them after the company was discovered to have engaged in the most extensive cheating scheme the online poker world has yet had brought to light.

In a recent TV appearance, Duke conceded that online poker was "illegal." Let's grant the assumption that this is limited to the United States and to real-money play. Let's further grant the assumption that she is not talking about players violating any federal statute (they are not, though some may be violating state anti-gambling statutes), but rather about the sites spreading the games and/or receiving deposits in connection with the same. Nothing about the legal status of the online poker offerings has changed since 2006. (April 15 of this year saw some enforcement action, but nothing about the legality--or lack thereof--changed that day.) Duke is essentially admitting on national television that the company for which she was a paid shill was engaging in criminal conduct for years, with her knowledge and blessing. How in the hell does that conform to the league's goal, as stated in that Code of Conduct, to "further...the positive public reputation" of poker?

Of course, as Commissioner, Duke is not a player. But that particular Clintonesque dodge won't work, given the Code's broad wording:

Everyone associated with the Epic Poker League is expected to avoid conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of poker and the League. This expectation applies to all players, tournament officials, employees and anyone else associated with the operations of the League.

So the League's commissioner got paid by a dirty site to continue to bring them business after it was publicly known that the site was dirty, while she knew that the company's core function (even when conducted honestly) was illegal. Can somebody please explain to me how this constitutes "avoid[ing] conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of poker"?

Or does Duke get the same "let bygones be bygones" pass that Matusow and other former criminals in the League get, but that is somehow not granted to DiVita?

My final question is this: How does a professional ethicist such as Martin, brought on board specifically to keep the organization's reputation white as the driven snow, fail to see these issues?

Addendum, September 14, 2011

See update on the story here.

Josie stirs up more trouble

Very Josie is at it again, causing more controversy in a recent tournament at Foxwoods. The details of the story are too long to summarize, and I don't want to just copy her entire post here, so before you read my breakdown of what went wrong and what should have happened, go read her narrative here. Of course, you don't have to, but if you don't, my comments probably won't make a lot of sense. Your call.

The reasons this seems complicated are, first, because there are a few different rules involved, and, second, because everybody involved got things at least partly wrong. (Sigh. It's so difficult to be perfect and omniscient in a world so full of flawed, error-prone people, but that is my burden.)

My thoughts, in no particular order:

1. First showdown action was on Josie. But that does not mean that she has to show first. It means that she has to either show or muck first. If she had, e.g., the worst possible hand for the board (in this case 2-5), she might choose to expedite getting on to the next hand by just pitching the cards into the muck as soon as the other guy checked behind. Or, since she had already decided she wouldn't call any bet he made, she could have just mucked her cards as her opening action, as soon as the river card came out, without even waiting for the other guy to decide whether to check or bet. Personally I wouldn't do that, because once in a while you get a surprise and the other guy will have done something dumb like misread his hand, and you both have the same hand (or both play the board), and you get half the pot.

2. It is wrong and a waste of time to show just one card at showdown. When the hand is over without a showdown and the pot is being or has been awarded to the winner, if you want to show just one card, fine, that's not a question of rules, but only of whether it's smart to give away that information. But when we are trying to decide who wins the pot, either show both of your cards or neither. Showing one card doesn't accomplish anything, and slows down the process unnecessarily. See my whole rant about this annoying practice here. If the obligation is on you to show or muck, and you decide to show, then SHOW--i.e., show both cards. Don't pussy-foot around about it. Don't try to get away with just announcing what you have. Get the cards on their backs and let's get it over with. There is absolutely no point in taking a few extra seconds to look at your cards in order to select one to show. You're not protecting any vital information.

3. The guy on the button, if he wanted to see Josie's card, easily could have. He would have been entirely within his rights to insist that she fulfill her obligation to either show both cards or muck them before he did anything. He screwed himself out of the opportunity to see her second card by convincing her that she had lost. He could have just waited silently for her to finish choosing to show both of her cards or muck her hand, or he could have politely reminded her that she needed to do one or the other.

4. Unless there's something missing from the story, Mr. Button never showed his cards, which I find bizarre. If I were in Josie's situation there, I would never just accept somebody else's word for what he had. Show me a higher pair, pal, or my hand is staying face-up and live, and I'll take the pot. Telling me what you have does not cut it. Too often people either lie or make an honest mistake about what they have. The poker world is full of angle-shooters who will take advantage of exactly the situation Josie set up by saying they have a better hand, hoping to induce a muck without showing, when they have nothing. I don't trust anybody. In this specific case, if he only made his pair on the river, what was he calling the turn with?

5. To sum up the foregoing, this should be really, really simple and fast. Josie shows her cards. (I trust all would agree it would be foolish to muck a small pair here without showing, since once in a while it will be the best hand.) Other guy can muck his cards unseen if he doesn't have a winner, or he can turn over his hand, in which case the cards speak and the best hand takes the pot. This process should take about three seconds total. It is unforgivable for it to be drawn out longer with stupid teases and half-efforts like showing one card or just verbally claiming a winner. Both people should in turn be showing or mucking rapidly so as to not waste the time of everybody else at the table.

6. The dealer was right about the other guy not having the right to see Josie's hand once she decided, for whatever reason, to muck her cards--at least as the standard rule. I understand that there are some cardrooms that treat a check-check river action the same as the IWTSTH ("I want to see that hand") rule, but I believe they are a minority. The dealer was wrong about the rule differing between cash games and tournaments, unless there is some unusual house rule at Foxwoods that I don't know about.

7. Let's change the situation a bit so that we cover the IWTSTH rule. Suppose Josie had bet again on the river, other guy calls. In this scenario, Josie has 2-5, the worst possible hand for this board, and knows that she cannot beat any hand with which he would have called. Rather than show her bluff, she decides to throw her cards away as soon as he calls. Now what? Well, that depends. If I ran a poker room, she would be allowed to muck unseen and not embarrass herself. (Of course, I don't think there should be anything embarrassing about being caught in a bluff, but many others feel differently.) Also, if I were the other player, I'm happy to let my opponent muck without showing; I'll take the pot uncontested, TYVM.

The rules about who can demand to see a called hand are highly non-standard. It's one of the most variable rules between B&M poker rooms. In some places any player can ask to see either hand. In some, only those who were still in on the turn can make that request. In others, only a player actually involved in the last action can ask. Some rules say that if it's heads-up on the river, the winner cannot demand to see the loser's hand. In some places you have to be able to convince the floor that you have reason to suspect collusion before he will grant the request for a hand to be shown, and in some places that rule applies only in high-stakes games. There might even be places where it is different for cash games and for tournaments; I'm not sure about that.

Tommy Angelo has a fine rant about why the traditional IWTSTH rule is bad for poker here.

And there is yet another complication. If the winner asks to see the loser's hand, in some places the losing hand is killed by tapping it on the muck before it is revealed. In other places, the hand is not killed first, which means that if it turns out that the "loser" accidentally misread his cards and was trying to throw away the best hand, the guy who asked to see it will have cost himself the pot, and the would-be loser gets a pleasant surprise reward.

I wrote a long post about all of this, including quoting all the rulebooks I have on hand, here. The impetus for that post was the only time I've seen the winner ask to see the loser's hand, and it turned out that the loser's hand was actually best. (He failed to notice that he had caught a runner-runner straight.) See also the comments to that post, which have further good discussion and readers sharing their experiences.

Final judgment: (1) Josie was wrong to show one card instead of either showing both or mucking. (2) Other guy was wrong for not taking advantage of his position by insisting that Josie either show or muck, and was further wrong for announcing his hand rather than showing, and was even further wrong for claiming that he had a right to see Josie's cards after she decided to muck. Worse, he was a completely douchebag for stopping play at the table while they called the floor to make a ruling on a situation that was so utterly trivial, especially since it was moot and the hand couldn't be retrieved to be shown by then anyway. A better course would have been to wait for the next break, then ask the tournament director what the applicable rule was. (3) Dealer was mostly right, but probably wrong about the cash/tournament point. (4) Floor guy was probably wrong, unless Foxwoods has some non-standard house rule that covers this situation--which is certainly possible, given all the variants that exist.

Oh, and one more thing: Josie gets maximal demerits for losing with the most powerful hand in poker, the Mighty Deuce-Four. I mean, how much do you have to suck as a player for you to let that happen? (J/K.)

Court is adjourned.