Random is random

There are a bunch of poker room rules and procedures that don't make any sense from a rational point of view. The ones I'm thinking of are those that are designed to preserve the order in which cards are or were "supposed" to come.

I was first sensitized to this early in my time playing live poker by a column by Lee Jones in Card Player magazine. Something got me remembering that piece today, and I found it in the C.P. archives, here, from November 15, 2005. As he emphasizes, a random card is a random card, and it makes no objective difference which random card(s) a player gets. But there is a lot of superstition about a "right" order of the deck, set in stone when the dealer makes the final cut before pitching.

For example, once in a while the dealer forgets to "burn" a card before putting out the flop, turn, or river--or, alternatively, accidentally pulls off two burn cards. This inevitably causes weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The floor is called. Arguments ensue about which card(s) are the "right" ones to be put on the board. In reality, it makes no difference. There are no "right" board cards. In principle, I wouldn't care if the dealer always spread the stub of the deck face down on the table and arbitrarily selected three cards to make up the flop (my only objection being that that would be slightly slower in execution). The flop needs to be three random cards. It does not need to be the three random cards that were precisely at positions 22, 23, and 24 in the cut deck (assuming a ten-handed game). Every card in the deck is equally random (or, at least, equally unknown and unknowable to both dealer and players, which is effectively the same thing). Random is random.

Similarly, we have a standard procedure of dealing the cards one to each player, going around the table as many times as necessary to deal the required number of cards (two in hold'em, for example). It would clearly be faster, more efficient, and less prone to error to have the dealer pitch the requisite number of cards to one player, then move to the next, etc. Except for the fact that it would be slower, in theory it wouldn't matter if the deck were spread out face down and players allowed to choose their own hole cards (though that would introduce some game integrity problems because of dishonest players). As Jones points out, there could be a standard rule that after the deal, players pass their unseen hole cards one seat to the left, and it wouldn't matter. Of course the outcome of each hand would be different, but any player's expected value for the hand wouldn't change; he would be exactly as likely to improve his status as to worsen it. Random is random.

Once in a while the dealer skips over a player in the pitch, and this isn't recognized until the next couple of players have received and looked at a card. The rational thing is just to give the missed player the next card on top of the deck when the deficiency is noted, then go on. But no--the silly rules say that it has to be declared a misdeal, lest players start out with hole cards other than the ones they were "supposed" to get, based on the order of the deck after the cut. It's preposterous.

The most complicated set of rules where this comes into play is in stud. My eyes glaze over when I read the byzantine procedures for assuring that each player gets the cards he is "supposed" to get. E.g., if a player folds his hand when not facing a bet, there are rules about how the next street is dealt to account for that anomaly. I don't even remember what they are, but it's all done in service of the crazy idea that the game is committed to some "destiny" of how the deck was ordered at the time of the cut.

As the good doctor says at the end of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's "Madness! Madness!"