It's Contract Bridge - Not Contract Poker

It was Mark Twain who observed that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on, by which time the truth has its work cut out for it. In the poker world, behavioral trends can be similarly treacherous, for once they take hold, even practices with no logical rationale can become entrenched to the point that resistance becomes difficult – but resisted they must be when they compromise the integrity of the game.

One such practice is that of making verbal contracts in the middle of hands. Although few people would defend such an idea when framed in those terms, observe what happens when it's pointed out that such contracts are drawn every time a hand is reduced to two players who then strike a verbal agreement to "check it all the way down." Suddenly, all bets are off – in more ways than one – for what's now being challenged is a custom that to growing numbers of low-limit players is a cherished bit of business, something viewed as a social nicety without implication or consequence. The trouble with this position is that it requires overlooking several essential facts, the most obvious being that pots don't get heads up by themselves, but as the result of action. So much for the absence of implication and consequence.

Making a verbal contract with an opponent in midhand, after action has eliminated all other opponents, is an act that clearly runs counter to one of the game's core principles, that of independent decision-making. As plain as this is, many players are so disinclined to engage a single opponent that they refuse to leave the matter to chance, insisting on their right to enter into such compacts even after their collusive implications are pointed out. What's going on here?

Although it varies from player to player, what's going on generally falls into one of four categories:

Social/cultural: Some players are uncomfortable with "specifically confronting" friends, relatives, or elders, or those of common ethnic background.

Fear: Many of the players who fear (not incorrectly) that their weak-passive play makes them an easy target in shorthanded games instinctively shy away from any and all shorthanded situations, preferring to steer around them by proposing a "social" alternative.

Following the herd: This involves players who (A) go along with the practice not out of personal preference, but out of reluctance to bear the social burden of bucking a trend, along with (B) the uninitiated, who are simply aping a routine they've often observed. The herd category also includes © dealers who become so numbed by repetition that they start soliciting such contracts the moment a field is reduced to two, thereby adding an official stamp to the business, and ratcheting up the social pressure already weighing on groups A and B.

Finally, there is the selective opportunism of those who have no problem with heads-up play, but who exploit the code of the opposite camp when it suits their purpose. This generally consists of making a show, following a neutral or unfavorable flop, of "discovering" something that was known perfectly well preflop: "How many players? Oh – is it just the two of us? Oh, then check, check; let's check it to the end."

Everyone's entitled, of course, to his own views, and equally entitled to check his hand in situations in which, whatever the reason, he feels uncomfortable betting. But checking – like betting or raising, or any action taken in a poker hand – entails risk measured against reward. Check and you risk a bet, bet and you risk a raise, raise and you risk someone playing back at you. When the risk outweighs the reward, you fold, declining the former and forfeiting the latter. Press on in the hand and you accept the risk, so as to remain alive for the prize. The "contractors," however, stand the whole business on its head, making a deal to lock up a no-further-risk guarantee that was unavailable to their opponents at the time they were being bet out of the hand. Spin it any way you will, this is a collaborative action that entails two parties making a mutual decision regarding the rest of the action on both their own and each other's hand.

Strip away the social trapping, and what you've got is nothing more than two players with chips granting themselves the option to declare all in, an option clearly not afforded by the rules. Indeed, a quick check of any rulebook will confirm the specific criteria required for such declarations – and the mere desire to see a free turn and/or river hardly qualifies.

Allow this sort of business to slide and it soon becomes formalized as custom, whereupon variations on its theme appear that quickly take matters from bad to worse. Here's how that scenario goes:

Step 1: Players start contracting all the way down when only two players enter a pot. Step 2: Players start contracting to check all the way after multiway pots have become heads up as the result of additional bets. Step 3: Players start contracting to check it all the way down when multiway pots become heads up as a result of bets and raises. Suddenly, the collusive implications are impossible to ignore.

Alas, the process is as predictable as it is inevitable, for once the core principle prohibiting one act is ignored, it will soon be ignored in others, as well, no matter the degree of seriousness. Eventually, of course, a backlash will occur, and enough players will start crying foul that management will be forced to act, at which point it will be in the unenviable position of having to invoke a principle to remedy abuses that developed only because the principle was ignored in the first place. A bit of a sticky wicket, that, and stickier still without the understanding that to solve the problem, the principle must be invoked consistently across the board – which means back to, and including, Step 1, the problem's point of origin.

If poker is to remain a game in which players of all shapes and sizes, all cultures and philosophies, and all views and opinions are offered a level playing field on which to compete, it must be played by a set of rules that remains constant in the face of those differences. In the poker room, it is we who must conform, all of us, to the same rules, so that everyone enjoys equal standing, and no one is granted unfair advantage. For those who remain unconvinced that heads-up contracts threaten that ideal, next time we'll look at some specific examples that illustrate the very real advantage enjoyed by those who engage in its practice.