Rabbit on the Menu

Not long ago, I was playing seven-card stud and found myself in the following situation: Starting with 10 J Q, I picked up the 9 on fourth street, and since the cards I needed to complete my straight remained live, so did my commitment to that draw. But fifth street paired my queen and sixth street paired the 9 (with both pair showing). Another player had aces and sixes showing, but one of the aces and both of the other sixes were dead. A third player – a maniac – was about to figure pivotally in this hand, as his board now showed three spades. If both of his holecards were spades, my straight draw was a dead one, but because of the way the betting had evolved, I was convinced he wasn't there yet. And I'd been counting the spades from the get-go because of the triple spades in my own starting hand. If I was right and he had only one in the hole, that meant there were only two spades left unaccounted for. The player with aces up checked on sixth street to see what would happen. The maniac bet – and I saw an opportunity.

If I didn't improve, it would be pretty difficult to win this pot, considering that I didn't have the best hand. It was not impossible, mind you, but if the aces up were to make it to the river and lead with a bet, my only shot would be a bluff-raise – and such an attempt would almost certainly fail, for he would have only one more bet to call and the pot was too large for him not to do that. Likewise, if both players checked (which was more likely) and I were to lead – well, the same problem. But the maniac is a chronic flush-bluffer, and by making his move now, on sixth street, he had provided me with the perfect opportunity to steal this pot. Raising here would force the aces up to cold-call a double bet, which would make all the difference.

I figured there was little chance he would call in this spot, given that his aces up were showing and I was raising right into them. Never mind that both of my nines were dead and one of my queens, as well – my opponent probably had noticed this, but he would also reason that the last queen had to be somewhere, and my raise would likely convince him that she'd taken up residence at my place on sixth street. With only one out for his redraw, surely he'd lay it down.

It worked; he folded. The maniac had enabled me to drive the best hand out of the pot, and when he then missed his flush on the river, I got to stack the chips without showing down. But although the fellow who laid down aces up on sixth street was convinced that I held the better hand, he still wondered about his draw. So, like a little kid, he asked the dealer if he could see what would have been his final card. This player knows full well that there's a house rule prohibiting such rabbit hunting, which I guess is why he decided not to wait for a response to his request. Instead, he simply reached over and picked up the next card off the stub. As to the dealer – despite his equal awareness of the rule – not only did he make no effort to prevent this, he didn't even admonish the player not to do it again in the future.

But, hey, no matter. If we indulge a player in a benign little violation of the rules – so what? OK, maybe "technically" there's not supposed to be any rabbit hunting, but there's no real harm, is there? After all, we all know that the rabbit-hunting rule is one of those fussy, arbitrary poker ordinances that were created for absolutely no reason, right? He just wanted to know what he would have made – no big deal.

But here's why it was – and is – a big deal. While information about his own hand's prospects may have been what he was looking for, what he found was a horse of a different color. You see, the card he saw was the case queen. And suddenly, everything was perfectly clear to him. He realized I had bluffed, since I couldn't have had the queens full that I had represented.

And therein lies the problem. Whatever his original intent, his illegal peek at that card gave him information about my hand – just as surely as if it were my holecards he'd turned over. Even worse, the information he acquired was not limited to that particular hand; more significantly, he was provided with a read on my overall play, which could prove very useful to him in the future. He discovered not merely what I had done, but what I was capable of doing.

What made this possible was the cardroom's general apathy to the violation of its own rules. Oh, but that's right, I keep forgetting – it's not one of the "important" ones.

For the sake of clarity, let's imagine a slightly different scenario. Imagine that my opponent's curiosity at the end of that hand had been less focused on his own "what if?" prospects and more focused on whether I'd bluffed him. Imagine further that instead of asking the dealer if he could see the next card off the deck, he had asked me if he could see my holecards. Imagine that instead of deciding not to wait for the dealer's response, he had decided not to wait for mine, and had simply reached across the table and turned over my cards. Do you suppose that any dealer or floorperson would treat this lightly? Can you imagine anyone failing to recognize the seriousness of such aggression? I can't. Even in the most permissive of cardrooms, such a brazen violation of the rules would be dealt with decisively and firmly.

Now, let's compare these two situations. In both instances, the player turns over a card/cards in conscious violation of the rules, and in both instances, the violation results in his discovering the content of my hand – even though he never called my bet. Does it make any difference where on the table those cards are located, for heaven's sake, considering that it's against the rules either way, and the result is exactly the same? Of course not. And yet, one violation is considered serious and the other trivial. Why? Because of a flawed fundamental premise that many players and many dealers proceed from these days, and the premise goes like this: "If I don't know the reason for a particular rule, there must not be one." In the case of players, that premise leads to the conclusion: " … and therefore I don't have to honor that rule." In the case of dealers: " … and I don't have to enforce it."

Violations of the rabbit-hunting rule have become routine in many cardrooms, and a yawning indifference to these violations has become just as routine. And while it is true that in most cases the result is not a clear abuse like the one I've described above, is that really the point? Poker rules, like any formalized code of conduct, are largely preventive in nature. In other words, they exist for the purpose of pre-empting the possibility of abuse. As such, the rules of poker are a package deal; they are not a menu from which to order a la carte. By indulging players in the notion that they can pick and choose which rules they like – oh, and can I have an order of fries with that? – management all but guarantees that the players' respect for the concept of rules in general will deteriorate. In fact, it already has.