A Rule I Love

Imagine that you're playing a hand of hold'em in which the turn card hits you perfectly, and the player in front of you, who led on the flop, now leads again. Will a raise knock out the two players behind you, or succeed in getting more chips in the pot? Not wanting to set off alarm bells by taking too long to figure it out, you grab a handful of chips and start cutting them in the pot, still mentally scrambling to make your choice. For the sake of argument, let's suppose that as you begin this action, you're leaning heavily toward a call, when suddenly, lo and behold, your decision gets reversed. Why? Because before you even cut the first stack, the player behind you shoots his cards into the muck, and his neighbor immediately does likewise. Since both folds happen in the blink of an eye, the raise that you now have little reason to pass up gets executed, literally, without a hitch – your cutting of the chips a smooth continuation of a motion already in progress, offering no clue that it's a strategic about-face, prompted solely by information you weren't yet supposed to have.

Now, let's tweak the scene just slightly. Imagine that everything's the same except for one thing: The folder's jumping of the gun has no effect on your decision, since your intention was to raise anyway. Is anyone adversely affected, or is this a case of no harm, no foul? Actually, the lead bettor is compromised in this scenario, as well, not by the information you receive, which is insignificant to you, but by the information he's denied, which is very significant to him – for a raise into three opponents would certainly have told him more about your hand than a raise into one.

Of course, none of this is your fault; it's impossible to "not know" that which you know, and you can hardly be expected not to act on available information. And the shoe could just as easily be on the other foot, with you as victim instead of beneficiary. Indeed, that may well be the case more often than you're aware, for hardly a day goes by when I don't observe numerous instances of such unintentional premature action. For all of its seeming innocuousness, however, the consequence can be significant, much greater than an extra bet won or lost. Indeed, in the case of a player who could stand a one-bet call, but not the raise that the early folds prompt, the difference may well be the pot itself.

Unfortunately, the fact that it's such a seemingly innocuous infraction makes it somewhat problematic to address. Let's face it, the offenders aren't jumping the gun by much – only a second or so – which makes mentioning it at all seem to some an exercise in so much hairsplitting. It's one thing, after all, to point out to a blatantly premature folder the importance of acting in turn, but quite another to try to explain it to someone who – because he waited for his neighbor to start his action – is convinced that he's done so. The idea that failing to wait for the players in front to complete their action compromises the players behind is something that's simply lost on many players, and resisted by those who believe they're being unfairly singled out for criticism.

So, what's to be done? Can the dealer help? Well, considering that it's something that happens in an instant, that it's not something that's telegraphed, and that the moment it occurs, the damage is already done, there's not much he can do about this occurrence, although he should say something so that it doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, effectively communicating that idea is as problematic for the dealer as it is for anyone else. Assuming that he can convince a skeptical offender that his action was premature in the first place, he then has to explain why it matters, and let's be honest, it may be easier to nail jello to a tree than to get your average table full of poker players, eager for nothing other than the next hand, to sit through a discourse on the importance of etiquette.

This leads us to a rule in effect in some East Coast cardrooms that I believe all rooms would do well to adopt. The rule is this: If you enter the pot with enough chips in your hand to constitute a raise, you've raised – period. As rules go, it's simple, efficient, and enforceable, and its effect is considerable. It eliminates split-second timing as an issue, because once the bettor, chips in hand, has reached into the pot, he no longer has the option to adjust his action to capitalize on someone else's unwitting, split-second-too-early fold. He's already committed to his action, because it's defined by the amount of chips he's brought into the pot.

The player who conscientiously waits for the person on his right to begin his action, but jumps the gun before he completes it, is committing an error of ignorance, not malice. Should an innocent third party pick up the tab for that error? The above rule provides a practical framework for the best answer: No. In this writer's opinion, it's a terrific rule, for it effectively eliminates a scenario in which one player all too often "pays big" for someone else's little mistake.