My Poker Rules

I have had a deep involvement in the development of poker rules for a long time. Twenty years ago, I wrote the first comprehensive rulebook on poker that was available to the public. It was the Poker Players Association rulebook. Our association (now defunct) got input from about a dozen of the top players on a full scale of poker rules, which was then made into a rulebook.

In 1987, when Cardroom Manager Tom Bowling Jr. launched the Las Vegas Hilton's new poker room, he commissioned my help in writing their rulebook, because he was familiar with my work with the PPA rulebook. I put a few hundred hours of work into it, after numerous discussions with Assistant Cardroom Manager Ron Ragge (who was especially helpful), the shift supervisors, dealers, and players. The result was a first-rate piece of work, which was state of the art at that time.

In 1994, when I was propping at Hollywood Park Casino, we opened with a rulebook that was adequate, but not the best. With help (thanks, Sandy), I did a major rewrite and organization job to produce a fine set of rules. This set of rules was especially helpful when I finally did a poker rulebook of my own after leaving California and moving to Michigan. This rulebook was available to anyone who wanted to use it (as opposed to a rulebook that was owned by a gambling establishment and not available to the public). I called my rulebook Robert's Rules of Poker. It was and still is available on my website for anyone to use, and it is free. I believe it is the world's best set of poker rules, and I charge nothing for it because I believe it is extremely beneficial to poker.

Because of my rules, I get a good flow of e-mail with poker rules questions. All of this correspondence is answered and put into files. Every so often, I do an update to my rulebook. Most of the time, it simply involves using a little better wording. Lately, I have had several situations presented to me that needed to be addressed in a more direct manner. The result is Version 5 of Robert's Rules of Poker, which was just released this fall. I think it is worth taking a look at some of the areas that needed clarification, because if they were not handled properly in my rulebook, the chances are very good that few (if any) other rulebooks would handle them properly.

In a recent column, I talked about the "show one, show all" poker rule. As we saw, when a hand is shown during the betting, there are several different ways the situation needs to be handled, depending on the exact circumstances. In a recent e-mail, a player told me about a situation that occurred in which only one card was shown, and asked if I thought the players had a right to see the whole hand. My rules did not talk about this situation, and I do not know of any other set of rules that does. Yet, I have seen it occur several times over the years, usually with someone claiming the whole hand must be shown. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with flashing a card as you throw away your hand – assuming that the hand is over. Sometimes a player shows a "bad one," implying that he stole the pot without showing the whole hand. More often, he shows a "good one," as if to say, "I had you beat." The point is, there is no reason anyone should be entitled to view more than what was shown. If a lady decides to dress in a manner to reveal some cleavage, are you then entitled to look at the whole works? You have to respect a person's right to give only a partial view, instead of concluding that the right to privacy no longer exists once a portion has been revealed.

One area of poker rules that is often misunderstood is when and to whom the betting is reopened when a player has gone all in. Each game has a minimum bet size. To get action on all of your money, you are allowed to bet less than the minimum bet size if you're going all in. However, such a bet does not necessarily reopen the betting to players who have already acted on that round. For example, in a hold'em game, four players check in a fivehanded pot. The last player goes all in for an amount less than the minimum bet. Is the betting reopened?

What is the minimum bet in a hold'em game? In a structured-limit game, it is whatever is specified in that structure. If it is a $20 round, a bet of $10 or more reopens the betting (limit poker treats a bet size of one-half or more as a full bet). In no-limit, it is the size of the minimum bring-in (opening bet). Normally, this is the same as the size of the big blind, but not always. For example, if you were playing with $5-$5-$10 blinds and had to open for $20 or more, then the minimum bet would be $20. At any rate, big-bet poker treats any wager less than a full-size bet as insufficient to reopen the betting. If it is a $10-to-go game, an all-in wager of less than $10 does not reopen the betting. I know of a number of Internet sites that have faulty rules for their software, in which underweight wagers have been allowed to open up a big raise. In revising my rules, I spelled out this rule in clearer language, hoping that people will realize this rule exists and how it works.

I have made a special effort to make my rules conform to the Tournament Directors Association rules. That organization has done a lot to standardize poker rules, and has used excellent judgment regarding which rules to adopt. But there is one place where my rules diverge from theirs. It is the rule that controls whether you can show any cards to your opponent when heads up. They simply say, "Never." The reason they do so is for simplicity. I think showing a card is OK as long as the rights of others are not adversely affected. Most of the time, showing a card injures the rights of other players in a tournament event. But if it is the last two players in a tournament, or the event is winner take all, the other players are not affected, and it should not be penalized. I consulted on this matter with an eight-player expert panel that was trying to draw up rules for televised professional poker league play, and they unanimously agreed with me on this.

On the other hand, I just got a letter from a reader who thinks showing a card to your opponent is a form of angle-shooting and should not be allowed in any game. Let me say that if you are in a cash-game pot heads up with me and decide to show me one of your holecards, I will not accuse you of angle-shooting, so feel free to try to deceive me by revealing half of your hand!

I invite you to go to my website, www.pokercoach.us, and download my latest set of poker rules, Version 5 of Robert's Rules of Poker. But a word of warning is in order: It is 60 pages long. I try to cover as many situations as possible. Not all men are wise, so we need wise laws.

Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons. E-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get Robert's Rules of Poker for free. Ciaffone is the cardroom director for ChecknRaisePoker.com.