The New Medium

In the past few years, we have seen a new arena appear for our poker games – the Internet. There is no question that Internet poker will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. We keep getting more online cardrooms, and are also creating a new generation of poker players to patronize them.

In this article, I would like to take a look at Internet poker from the perspective of those who design and maintain online cardrooms. I must admit that my Internet experience is quite limited, since I started playing with any regularity only this year. But I have never been slow to generate ideas or opinions. We have a new frontier for poker, and it would be nice to see it get off on the right foot. I have seen some ideas in some regular cardroom operations that are clearly inferior, yet have become so widespread that it will be hard to undo the damage now. (The rule that the dealer is not supposed to burn a card when redealing is a good example of the type of inferior rule I am talking about.)

In designing an Internet poker site, one is confronted with two dictums, each pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, you want people to feel comfortable in the new environment. An important way to do this is to carry over familiar ways of doing things into the new setting. Tugging in the opposite direction is the desire to make the most of virtues available in the new setting, which, of course, encourages a break with the past. (This antithetic effect of a new medium is not peculiar to poker, but is common to any situation where there is a new setting, but people are more familiar with the older one. The switch from radio to television in the late '40s is a good real-world example.)

Here is an example of preserving tradition, to make the player feel that he's in familiar surroundings. In a real cardroom, the cards are dealt by a dealer; in a virtual cardroom, cards are dealt by a random number generator. But on the typical Internet poker site, there is a "dealer" sitting across the table from you. This depictor of a dealer might even have a name tag, like Lee or Leslie, to make the setting even more folksy or familiar. I do not see anything wrong with this at all, because using the old and familiar does not sacrifice any efficiency in the virtual cardroom. But one should not strive for familiarity at the expense of superior function.

Here is an example of an area where I think the virtual cardroom should break with tradition: the showdown rules. Let's look at the real-world cardroom. The bettor or last raiser is supposed to show his hand first. In hold'em, the round was checked, showing starts at the left of the button. A player has the option of either showing or mucking. Often, a third option is exercised: sitting there in the hope that the other players will get impatient and show, whereupon the sitter can either gleefully slow-roll some would-be winner, or at least get away without having to show his hand. This behavior is to the detriment of the game, but the fact that the players hold their own hands makes it hard to exercise proper control over showdown behavior.

Now let's look at the virtual cardroom. The players do not hold their hands, so we have two choices. We can either mimic a real cardroom by giving each player a menu that controls whether the hand will be shown, or we can exercise some electronic control over the matter. I have played in a virtual cardroom that tries to mimic the real world. The showdown can take half a minute, and the opportunity to slow-roll still exists. To me, this is a prime example of failing to get the most out of the new medium, the Internet.

Here is the way I think a virtual cardroom should be run. The showdown should take only a few seconds. Dealing in the maximum number of hands is desirable, from the perspective of the player and the management. A menu of whether to show the hand or not is a big user of time. If the bettor or last raiser has the best hand, why not just show the hand to everyone and get on with the game? If the bettor or last raiser does not have the best hand, show that hand anyway, then show the winner. I do not see how anyone could complain about such a procedure, because it treats all the participants equally, and has clear value in speeding up play.

Suppose the last round was checked. Should we now use a menu and give the players something to think about? I do not see why we should. There are a couple of ways to handle the situation without having the players thinking about whether to show. One way is to simply show the winner and muck the others. The other would be to stick to the traditional way of going from the left of the button, and show all hands that would be shown in a regular game. This means showing the first hand, then showing or mucking the second, depending on whether it's higher, and going around the table until the winner is revealed. While I have a slight preference for the first of these methods, I would support any reasonable system that does not give players the prerogative to hold up the game deciding whether to show a hand.

I am sure there are some people who think that it is important to give people the chance to make a "live game" mistake by throwing away a winner, as could happen when the player in a virtual cardroom gets a "show or throw" menu. My opinion is diametrically opposed to this type of thinking, as I get a warm and comfortable feeling when the best hand wins.

Another area where the real and virtual world differ is folding a hand. In the real world, the player has control over his hand, and can soup it whenever he wishes. Yes, I know that a player is supposed to fold only in turn, but the penalty for folding out of turn is a short lecture about not folding out of turn. Furthermore, you seldom see a player get lectured for folding in turn when not facing a bet, but in many circumstances, this is also disruptive and unfair. For example, suppose there is a three-way pot between the small blind, the big blind, and the button. The small blind checks, the big blind folds, and it is up to the button. The button has access to information that the small blind did not have when he acted – that only two players would be contesting the pot. The big blind by revealing he is folding after someone acts has aided one player and not another, which is contrary to the ethics of poker.

On the Internet, there is no reason why a site's software should allow a player who is not facing a bet to fold. The purpose in folding is to allow the player to rapidly leave the table, watch the tube, start a conversation, and so forth. In a live game, there is no button to push allowing the cards to be held, then mucked at the fair and appropriate moment. On the Internet, we have such a button, so why should the program not hold onto the cards until the right moment to muck? The player by pushing a button can now go about his business and not disrupt the game in the least.

I have played poker on an Internet site that not only allowed the player to fold whenever it was his turn, it encouraged players to make a mistake by offering "fold" as one alternative on a pop-up menu when not facing a bet. The first time that happened to me, I was in the big blind and thought someone had raised the pot. Imagine, the software trying to bait a player into folding. This is only one of many examples of poorly thought out programming for Internet poker sites.

The Internet provides an opportunity for creativity in computer programming. There are many things that can be done to improve the quality of the poker-playing experience that are not available in a regular cardroom. Unfortunately, from what I have seen, a lot of programmers simply try to mimic the real world as closely as possible, instead of using their imaginations to try to take advantage of the new medium.

Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone is available for poker lessons. He may be reached at (517) 792-0884, or by E-mail at [email protected]. His website is www.diamondcs.net/~thecoach. His books Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Hold'em Poker, Millennium Edition are available through Card Player.