The Flash of a Hand

Don E-mailed me a description of a "flashing" situation in a cash game and wonders whether he acted unethically. Read along and come to your own conclusions before reading my analysis. "I was playing in a $6-$12 hold'em game and was seated in seat No. 7 right at the bend of the table. A drunk tourist was in seat No. 5 with one player sitting between us," Don began. "The player in seat No. 5 had been warned several times by more than one dealer and by a few players not to expose his cards because it gave the players next to him an unfair advantage. The inebriated tourist responded that he was there just to have fun, and didn't care about winning or losing. I had tried to demonstrate to him the proper way to hold his hand over his cards, but he wasn't paying attention. He wasn't just flashing his cards, he was picking them up off the table and waving them around. Even from two seats away, I could easily see them by just turning my eyes that way with no head movement necessary.

"On the button, I picked up a K-8 offsuit, not a hand that I normally would play. A few other players limped in, including seat No. 5, who was holding the 10 9, not an unreasonable play. I called. The flop came 7-6-3 of different suits, with one diamond. It was checked to him and he bet. Semibluff? Give me a break; this guy wouldn't know a semibluff from a semitruck, as Michael Wiesenberg once put it. He was just putting money into pots at random, pretty much independent of his cards. I decided to raise. Two players cold-called my raise and he called. The turn brought a blank. The cold-callers checked and No. 5 bet again. I decided to raise again to try to get it heads up. It worked: Both of the other players folded and seat No. 5 called.

"The river brought another blank. I knew that I had the boss hand with a king high, no pair. Seat No. 5 came out betting. I raised. He decided to start a raising war, raising four times. Each time, I reraised. At the end, he finally called with his 10-high, no-pair hand. I announced "king high," and showed my cards, at which time he just turned over his cards and let the dealer read them, the way that he usually did.

"One player lamented, 'I should've stayed with my ace high.' I said nothing, but thought that (1) the ace-high player wasn't in a position to see five cards because he didn't have proper position, and (2) if he had stayed in, I wasn't going to show my cards. I don't think that I acted unethically in this situation, but I'm willing to listen to what you might have to say, Tom."

If a player has been warned repeatedly, yet continues to lift his cards high off the table where several people can see them, there isn't much that can be done short of throwing the offending player out of the game. The catch is that you had an unfair advantage in this particular hand, since you could see what the drunk held and your opponents couldn't. Of course, you also had an advantage over the intoxicated tourist, who got pretty much what he deserved. Is this unethical? I don't think that looking at his cards was unethical, since he practically shoved them in your face. Of course, you played your hand to fully exploit and take advantage of your privileged information to the detriment and expense of the two other people in the hand. Either one of them possibly could have won the pot had you not protected your advantage by putting in the extra raises to force them out, but apparently they did not criticize your play. Although I don't think that you did anything totally out of line, I can tell you that if I had been one of the other guys in the pot, I would have been pretty upset that I didn't have the same advantage that you had.

The question arises as to whether this situation should have been allowed to continue. The inebriated player probably should have been removed from the game by floor personnel, but since the other players at the table did not really complain about him (after all, he was throwing the party), I can understand why he was allowed to stay.

I wrote a column last year describing a tournament situation that came up in which a player who had trips saw his opponent's hand when the player inadvertently flashed it, and noticed that he was drawing to a straight. The player with the trips thought about deliberately showing his opponent the set, hoping that his opponent would abandon his straight draw. I answered that even though they were heads up in this situation, it would have been unethical to show the opponent the set. I then went on to say that even in a side game, it would have been unethical to show the hand.

In his post on rec.gambling.poker, a player named Chris disagreed with my opinion. "Although in most situations I would agree, I submit that it is acceptable to expose your cards to your opponent before the hand is over if and only if you already are heads up. In this situation, no other players can be harmed by your action and your opponent can only gain from seeing your cards, so it should be permitted. (Why you would do so is a bit of a question, since I can't see a situation in which it would be to your advantage.)"

Chris, I think that exposing your hand in a cash game when you are heads up violates the spirit of the game, but I wouldn't be too tough on the person who did it. Flashing your hand certainly won't help your situation much, because now your opponent can fully calculate his chances of improving enough to beat you and decide whether he wants to take that risk by continuing with his draw. Of course, the motive behind exposing your hand is to discourage him from possibly drawing out on you at the end. It isn't totally unethical to expose your cards, it is more a form of psychology, a way of convincing your opponent that it isn't in his best interests to continue to draw against you. Psychological warfare usually is considered to be within the boundaries of the game.

What about intentionally exposing your cards to others during a tournament? Although I've touched briefly on this point before, my next column will be devoted entirely to it. Between now and then, I hope to meet you in the winner's circle.

Author's note: I invite you to visit my new website, www.tournamenttalk.com, where you can post questions and receive responses, read archives of past columns, get the scoop on my 2001 World Series adventures, and read profiles of well-known poker personalities.