Acting With Integrity

Before I started earning my keep in cardrooms, I made my living as an actor. (Risk-adverse I'm not.) And while the poker table is now the main stage for this player, I still keep my hand in that other pot. Recently I was performing in a play in Hollywood, and one night there was a brief technical problem. During a scene in which a married couple was conversing intimately while slow-dancing at a nightclub, there was a glitch in the sound booth and the music came on too loud. Normally, this kind of thing wouldn't be a big deal; the actors would simply adjust vocally – but the nature of their dialogue made those adjustments problematic. You see, the main purpose of this particular scene was to underscore the personality differences between the man and his wife. He was loud and utterly oblivious to other people's reactions, while she was intensely private, wishing always to remain inconspicuous. In fact, several of her lines consisted of pleas for him to lower his voice. But with the music up so high, this exchange didn't quite make sense anymore. For one thing, her appeal for him to lower his voice seemed out of place, what with the audience straining just to hear him. Worse still, in order for her own lines to be heard over the music, she had to deliver them at a volume level that contradicted her introverted nature. Indeed, she was now speaking even louder than he was.

It's not as if this ruined the entire performance, but those moments limped along badly, and the integrity of the scene was compromised by an internal contradiction. Even if the audience couldn't tell why the scene didn't work, they were vaguely aware that it didn't.

What does this have to do with poker? Well, we talk a lot in this space about the integrity of the game, and I'd like to clarify something about that. Many people these days tend to use the word "integrity" merely as a vague synonym for "goodness" or "honesty." But it's useful to remember that the word is actually rooted in the concept of "integration" – that is, in the process of combining parts into a working, unified whole. And the whole can't work if its parts are set against each other. This principle applies to anything that man devises or invents, whether it be an automobile motor, a scene in a drama, or the policies of a cardroom.

Two incidents at the poker table recently illustrate this point. In incident No. 1, I was playing hold'em when two new players entered the game, and it was obvious they were friends. Shortly after their arrival, I found myself in a three-way pot with them. I led with a bet on the flop, at which point one of them raised me and the other reraised. After a few moments to consider my decision, I folded. The moment I did, they turned their cards over and said, "Let's check it down all the way," thus converting my chips into dead money. After my two bets were pushed to the winner, he pushed half of them to his buddy.

It goes without saying, of course, that poker is a positional game, and to use one player's bet to drive out another with a raise is a perfectly legitimate strategy. It should also go without saying that that's not what happened here. My cards went into the muck because my opponents' chips went into the pot, and since poker is a game defined by cumulative implied risk, and since I judged the risk in this case to outweigh the potential benefit, I chose to decline that risk. The moment my cards hit the muck, however, my opponents made a contract to eliminate such risk. In fact, they contracted to eliminate not only any future risk in the hand, but their previous risk, as well – they simply reached into the pot and took back the raises that had driven me out. They then treated themselves to a free turn and river, which, by the way, would have given me the winning hand. Of course, I was no longer in the pot, having been driven out by action that was binding while I was in, but somehow not binding after I'd folded. Having welched on their own action, they added insult to injury (actually, injury to injury) by chopping my preflop and post-flop bets between them – right in front of me. In short, they robbed me.

Incident No. 2 happened a few nights later. A new player entered the game, conspicuously drunk. In the next half-hour, he proceeded to act out of turn regularly, push chips to another player, speak non-English while hands were in progress, and expose cards during action.

I've lumped the second incident with the first because of what these three players all have in common. They are all employees of the very cardroom where they exhibited this behavior. They are all poker dealers.

The integrity of a cardroom is severely compromised by this kind of conduct, because unprofessional, unethical behavior cannot be integrated with a professional, ethical atmosphere – or a professional, ethical image. How can a sense of respect for rules and ethical behavior be integrated into a cardroom in which some of the worst offenders are the room's own representatives?

The parts must work together as a whole. But is that what's happening if a hardworking, conscientious dealer in the box is trying to run the game and enforce the rules – while a dealer on the other side of the table is busy breaking them? Is it possible to integrate table etiquette and poker ethics with loutish and shady behavior?

Take that dealer who was pushing chips to his buddy while playing on his own time. Now, fast-forward to the next night, when he's working, and two other players are doing the same thing. A third player, visibly annoyed, shoots him one of those looks that says: "Dealer, do something about this." So, he admonishes the players not to pass chips, but suddenly comes the response: "Give me a break. I was playing with you last night, and you were doing it all over the place. What have we got here, one set of standards for the customers and another for the employees? Get off my back." What is the dealer supposed to say at that point? What can he say?

And rewind, for a moment, back to that previous night when this dealer was himself the offender. The other dealer, the one in the box, was confronted with a dilemma he should never have to face. On the one hand, there's a club policy that states that disputes with fellow employees must be conducted away from the table – and he knows from experience that cracking down on his ill-mannered colleagues will indeed result in a dispute. But at the same time he has an obligation to protect all of the players in his game, and that means right now. Once again, the parts are working against each other.

As in the Hollywood play, internal contradictions within a poker "scene" are a drag on the performance as a whole. Likewise, the level of attendance in a cardroom, just as in the theatre, is less dependent on the formal reviews than it is on a reputation gained by word of mouth. Management needs to be aware of the inherent integrity gap that is formed when dealers are trained to shuffle, pitch cards, and read hands – but receive no training whatsoever in even the most fundamental tenets of poker ethics and etiquette.

These employees, in their own minds, were simply having fun. But in a professional setting, as someone once noted, fun is serious business. More to the point, the business of integrity is not a part-time gig. Employees should always remember that when it comes to integrity, there is no such thing as "off the clock."