All Your Cards

Many years ago when I was a buck private in the Army, my outfit was standing at attention on the parade ground, being inspected by our commanding general. One of my friends had "helped me out" by adjusting my tie, unbuttoning a collar button in the process, and did not button it back up. As the general and my commanding officer moved from the soldier on my right and approached, I knew something was amiss when my commander looked at me and immediately winced. When the general inspected me, he asked, "How many of your buttons are supposed to be buttoned, soldier?"

I foolishly answered, "I don't know, sir."

Of course, the right answer was, "All of them."

How many cards are you supposed to have at the showdown in a poker game? Once again, the only right answer is, "All of them." But suppose you don't?

Many poker rules were not written by a kindly gentleman (like yours truly) who is looking out for the beginner who has blundered in some fashion. No, they're written by someone more like a commanding general who goes by the old Army rule, "Keep it simple, stupid." This is known as the KISS principle in the military. KISS favors broad generalizations rather than tailored solutions – one size fits all rather than flexibility in fitting.

The relevant poker rule used in most cardrooms, written in accordance with the KISS principle, is, "A hand at the showdown that does not have the proper number of cards for that poker form is a dead hand." This is straightforward, direct, and easy to understand. But I have some questions. Is it optimum? Is it fair? Is it necessary?

No one can question the rule in terms of what should happen when a player has too many cards. Nobody wants to compete against a player who has an extra card unless his hand is dead. So, we are talking about what should happen when a player is short a card.

As many of you readers of my column know, the first thing I want to test about a rule is how well it works in practice. If a rule is obviously unfair in certain cases, we should either junk it or fine-tune it better. In this case, I am looking to do the latter. So, let's look at the "all your cards" rule in practice.

I am not concerned about the games of hold'em or Omaha, because in those games, I have never seen a case in which a player was short a card at the showdown. (I have seen several cases in which a player was short an entire hand, and looked around in startled concern saying, "Where's my cards?" Of course, we know he's a goner.)

The most likely scenario for missing a card occurs in seven-card stud, when a player has only six cards at the end, undoubtedly missing his river card. The poor devil; what happened? In nearly all of these cases, the player was dealt a card, but failed to take it in, protecting his hand. At some point, the dealer thought it was part of a discarded hand, and mucked it. What should we say? One possibility is, "A player is supposed to protect his hand. If he doesn't, punch his tough luck card and throw him a tear towel. This is the big leagues, baby, not kitchen-table poker." That would be the Army way.

Of course, you and I would not fail to protect our last card, so who are the screw-ups? Most often, it is a combination of a player who is new to poker and a hand so big that the last card is irrelevant. Here is an example that occurred in a World Series of Poker razz tournament. A multimillionaire from North Carolina, who was new to poker, was playing in his first competitive poker event. In the tournament, the gentleman received a powerful hand, a made 6 on sixth street vs. a board of brick-8-7-baby. Realizing that he had a board lock, he disdainfully flipped his last card into the muck, saying, "I don't need it."

"Director!" his opponent called, happy to find out that he was not drawing dead after all.

To shorten a long story, the tournament director followed the law and awarded the pot to the player who had no outs the previous moment. The North Carolina millionaire was so outraged, he never was seen or heard from in the poker world again.

What do you think about what happened? Here is what I think. A player committed the typical type of mistake that a rookie in any game might make: violating a rule, but not with malice in mind, and not damaging another player. It was a violation of form, not substance. Since he obviously had the best hand, he deserves the pot. All he needs is an explanation that he is supposed to keep all of his cards instead of throwing any away that he doesn't need. If after being warned he continues to violate the rule, that's another matter, but we should cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, no penalty is needed, just a warning.

Here is another example, from the game of draw high. I received an E-mail – the catalyst that brought about this column – from someone asking the following: "In our home game the other night, we were playing five-card draw. We had eight players, so a player could draw a maximum of only two cards. The player who won the pot mucked three cards, and the dealer gave him two; so, he had four cards in his hand and won the pot with three kings. Is he allowed to win with only four cards in his hand?" The answer, according to most rule sets, is no; but morally speaking, he ought to.

Exchanging old cards for new ones, as is done in draw poker, is risky business, with regard to a player winding up with an incorrect number of cards. The only thing that stops draw from dominating the list of poker forms in which errors of this nature occur is the fact that it is not played much anymore. (Is there a correlation?) I simply fail to understand why there should be any penalty for being short a card in draw poker. If a player has only four cards, how does that hurt anyone but the player himself? It's not like he is trying to claim that he has a straight or a flush with fewer than five cards. And it's not like he is the cause of the error occurring, even though we admit that he has failed to take all the precautions that he should – the typical mistake of the less experienced player. In my opinion, it is OK to tell him that it is too late to get any more cards once the next player has been dealt to, but there is absolutely no reason to kill his hand. If his four-card hand is good enough to win, God bless and give him the money.

We see from practical examples that the sweeping rule that a hand short a card at the showdown is dead leads to injustice. It is OK for hold'em and Omaha, but not for stud or draw. The rule can and should be changed, either to say the hand is still live or at least to give the decision-maker the authority to rule it live if he believes it to be fair and appropriate. There is no need for the Draconian solution that being short a card is the KISS of death. That is an Army type of solution, which is inappropriate for poker.